Mrs. Tester

Google Docs Collaborative Review

2011-06-13T12:05:00.000-07:00

Here is Adrion and my Amazon reviews put together with the three books Richardson, Dixon, and Collins. Reading the books was great and I think that I can really use the information in the books to become a better teacher and educator. There is already some things in the books that I have spoken to my colleagues about that I would like to implement at our school. None of the books dissapointed!

Group Carissa Tester, Adrion Walker

Group Reviews as one document. Richardson, Dixon, and Collins.

Chapter one of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and other powerful Web Tools for Classrooms touches on the history and initial vision of the web from it creator and how it has begun to reach those initial goals. This chapter goes on to explain how the web is no longer just for read and view but it has matured into an interactive tool. The key components and success to a read and write web are creating connections and groups. The passion and interests of common individuals that form connections and groups across that web that would not normally take place in a few years. Many areas have caught on to the change of groups and connections and groups on the web. Politics, businesses, and in our people for their own personal use have used these groups to their advantages in gaining votes and promoting their products. As well as web user are easily publishing text, pictures, and videos. As many areas are catching on Education is slow to adapt but it is inevitable. Our students are using many technology tools but without proper guidance while many teachers have no clue about Facebook, podcast, and blogs. The tools in this book are easy ways to use within a classroom and will help close the gap. Richardson shares with educators a few tools that can be used in the education that will connect technology with education. The tools are Weblogs, Wikis, Really Simple Syndication (RSS), Aggregators, Social Bookmarking, Online Photo Galleries, Audio/Video Casting, Twitter, and Social Networking Sites.The next chapter that we chose to review was chapter 2. This chapter explain what Weblogs are and how they can be used in education. A weblog is website that is “compromised of reflections and conversations. (p. 17) Weblog are not content or journals of information but discussion and sharing of ideas and opinions. Many young adults use these site recklessly instead of finding their educational value and purpose. Many stories have surfaced of the dangers of predators and students endangering themselves by divulging too much personal information. Richardson shows the “blogging is genre that engages students and adults in a process of thinking in words, not simply an accounting of the day’s events or feelings. (P. 19).” This chapter further explains a variety of way to use Weblogs in schools. Weblogs can be use as a “classroom portal” to publish assignments, notes, important information, syllabuses, classroom rules, etc. As you read, the chapter explains the many ideas to use Weblogs in your classroom. From Electronic Portfolio, School Website, From a student’s educational standpoint weblog improve student’s learning. One major point discussed in this section is that “weblog truly expand the wall’s of the classroom (P.26).” Furthermore, weblog support different learning styles. Countless ideas are embedded into this chapter about weblog and education. This chapter, Chapter 3, is about how all parents, students, and administrators are clear on why this technology is being used in the classroom. For parents the first thing that they can do to make sure their child is safe is give their student permission to use this technology for school. Most schools send home an acceptable use sheet to sign and parents should be aware of this and make sure that they get one. Parents also need to communicate with teachers about what the teacher is doing to make sure that student privacy is protected. Parents need to make sure they talk to their children about never putting personal information on the blogs and the parents also need to know the process for reporting problems with blog content. Lastly as a parent they need to oversee the student’s blog and then decide what to do with it at the end of the course. When creating a weblog with students always start small and work your way up. Blogger.com created by Google is one of the easiest weblogs for anyone to use, there is no perfect way to use a blog but this one is up there for ease of use and not a lot of confusion. As a teacher it is hard to track all of what your students are doing, however, you can follow your students and watch their posts. You can edit and have different templates and even add pictures to blogs as well.This chapter, chapter 4, is about Wikis and how easy it is for all people who are a part of one to collaborate on it. It starts out by introducing Wikipedia and what a great and easy website it is to use; a wealth of knowledge that people have come together to share. The wiki part of the word comes from the Hawaiian word wiki wiki which means quick. It is an easy authoring tool with over 3 million entries at this point in English. A person can fix, erase, or add just about anything they would like with the original author being able to change it back at any time. One could say that Wikipedia is the original poster child for collaborative construction of knowledge and web based interaction. Businesses use Wiki’s to keep track of their work and teachers and students are using it as blog based sites. If teachers are using Wikipedia in school they should definitely check the accuracy before they have their students look at the site page and they also should be aware of the fact that Wikipedia is a collaborative site, meaning not one person has written the whole thing by themselves. As a teacher you can create an online text for your curriculum with a Wiki that your students can contribute to. This could become a resource for best practices and something that other teachers and their students could use as well. The chapter then gives examples of Wikis in classrooms some that have been very successful right here in Georgia! Creating a Wiki as a teacher is fairly easy and once you get the hang of it you can do great things in the classroom.

In the Dixon book the first chapter we decided to review was Facebook. Facebook is the most popular social networking site currently on the internet. Dixons explains some detailed information in the Facebook chapter of The Innovative School Leaders Guide to Social Media. This chapter is not only for the novice user of Facebook, but it also is very helpful to those that have quite a handle on the social media site. From post and pictures, to scheduling events. This guide is essential to those that want to understand the functions and usages of Facebook. Not only is the different aspects of Facebook explained in the chapter but it gives specific examples of how to incorporate Facebook into the school system. This guide also gives you the advantages of using Facebook within your class, school, or a business standpoint. It explains that every time someone views a page or ad Facebook tracks this information. From a standpoint of advertising Facebook is cost effective and gets the job done much faster and cheaper than regular advertisements on television, radio, and billboards. As a school leader this chapter explains all the benefits of using Facebook that definitely outweigh the cons. Dixon does a great job of pointing out the easy ways to use Facebook for your school. The chapter about email was second. The Dixon book was unlike any I had really ever read before; however I thought that it was very helpful when learning to use different types of social media. I really actually enjoyed the pictures because I learn from seeing other people and examples of things and so it was perfect. The first chapter that I looked at was the chapter titled “Email.” At the beginning of the chapter I was actually surprised that the book said most people didn’t use email efficiently. I thought that was interesting because to me, there really isn’t a whole lot to do on email and I would think everyone uses it the same. Dixon gives four steps in the emailing process, select all, star the important stuff, archive the rest, and review the stars. He also states that you should have at least two important folders, one for things you will read someday and the other for waiting for someone to respond. To be in education three tips about emailing are check it less frequently, set up filtering rules, and try and keep your email program closed. Lastly some advanced emailing tips are here have email groups, set up smart subjects, have a catch all account, and have a context based email address. I found these tips very useful and was happy to say that I actually already do some of them! Dixon really brings out some common sense things but they may be things that people overlook and really are quite helpful. Cell phones was the last chapter. As a teacher and just someone who is on the go a lot my cell phone is my go to for anything business or family related. After reading Dixon’s chapter on cell phones I could really appreciate what my actual cell phone could do for me if I had it all organized and actually new all the capabilities that it has to offer me! In the chapter Dixon starts off by talking about how people use cell phones and how we are more accessible now than we used to be because of them. With a cell phone you can really get a hold of anyone, anytime, anywhere. If your school or you personally have a Facebook page you can update this through your cell phone now, and you can also use your cell phone to collaborate with parents also. Some principles have started using text messages to let parents know different things about the school such as weather reports and school functions that are going on; such a quick and easy way to get a message to so many people in just a few clicks of a button. As a teacher or administrator you should give out your personal cell phone number to parents and put a personal approach on things with an email signature or business card for your school. If you don’t feel comfortable giving parents your personal cell phone number you can always set up a voicemail hotline or Skype or even K7 Net which is similar to Skype. Another effective tool for engaging your school community is text message marketing and even though a lot of schools don’t allow students to have cell phones in the classrooms a great way to get students engaged is through mobile polling. If the students use this mobile polling they can answer and ask questions and give their opinion while sitting at their desks and using their cell phones.

For the Collins book we reviewed chapters 4, 7, 9, and 10! Collins explains the development of American schooling in this chapter, chapter 4. This historical transformation of education and schooling in America is quite Interesting. With the beginning, Collins talks about schooling being the responsibility of parents where children learned the needs of their life from parents to live. This was an apprenticeship format of education where children learned trades from parents or relatives. Then their was a shift to state education under the movement of Horace Mann, which resulted in the American School system. “The American school system resulted from a chain of events that included: 1.) the invention of the printing press, 2.) the Reformation, 3.) the American Revolution, and 4.) the Industrial Revolution (p. 50).” The establishment of the universal schooling in America became difficult to change after experimenting with different structures and strategies. The ones that worked stuck and new structures and strategies had to fit within the structure that seems to work. The school system evolved to solve a set of problems a growing and urbanizing country. The problems and demands of the nation have now changed but the system of school remain the same. “By the 21 century, we have seen great technological and social changes that have yet to be reflected in the schools (P.62).” In this chapter, 7, Collins reflects on the vision of Horace Mann and that he saw education developing into a social cohesion. “This may be lost” because as awesome as the Internet and technology is to us as a society it major spread and grow is due to groups that interact through a common interests. Common interest group through religion or ideas well continue to develop curricula that addresses concerns they have that fit with raising their children. Because of social media that can create groups of common interest in short periods of time the cohesion that Mann vision will be what we may lose. We may also lose interaction with others as they will sit more in front of the computer isolated. On the other hand we may gain some things as well. Education will be more engaging for all and not just younger students. Computers and technology can be customized to fit the needs of individuals. More challenging for those that need it or adapted for those that need a different approach to meet their learning styles. In this chapter “What Does It All Mean?” chapter 9, it explains why students should use technology and what benefits it gives them and what the parents should be looking for and encouraging in their children with school and technology. This section stated that the emergences of technology based learning environments require parents along with teachers to pay attention to how and what children learn outside of school and the home. Not only can the parents and teachers raise awareness of the new technologies they can also begin to appreciate the range of new skills that kids develop when they get to start using these technologies in school and at home. The chapter also talks about how technology is a large threat to children of school age, but also one of the greatest opportunities that they will have to do what they want. Technology has become an economic engineer that students and parents can use to their advantage. Teachers are being pressured to change their traditional classrooms into ones that integrate technology so that they are not left behind when the students know more about the technology than them. There will still be parts of the traditional classrooms they will just be implemented in different ways, like math homework will still be math homework it will just be done online and scored immediately. The one thing that has school holding back is the funding or lack of it in schools across America.In this chapter, 10, it starts out talking about needing a new change and vision for education, this can be done through technology. In an economy like the one that we are in today we need economic success not only for individuals, but also for our country as a whole. This can be done through education involving technology. The gap between countries and what they have and don’t is only getting bigger, and not smaller. Education is moving outside of the schools walls while using these new forms of technology, but we need to focus on improving the schools not just getting the technology to them. One of the main goals for education reform is to rethink how we motivate our children to learn, and fortunately technology helps with this because students are more driven when using technology in the classroom. While rethinking how to get the students ready to learn and use technology to do this we also need to rethink what is actually taught content wise to them. In an age with many technological resources what is best to teach them and how? Is traditional the best content for students or new skills invoked rich with technology better? Whatever the answer these two are not usually looked at together by educators, it is mostly one or the other. Communication and math are very big in today’s competitive economy but is this the best route to take in education or should we stick with the traditional reading and writing? Careers and what we do in jobs are also rapidly changing, and our educational system in one way or another needs to keep up!

YouTube Video PBL for Economics

2011-06-09T18:34:00.000-07:00

Here is my YouTube video for my PBL final project. At first I thought that it was going to be really tricky getting getting this all together but it was actually fairly easy for me and something I enjoyed doing! I ended up putting together a small powerpoint and using CamStudio to put everything together and to upload it to YouTube. CamStudio is a great tool and something that is free which is never bad! It was easy to get the hang of and I thought that it was even something that my students could use. With the powerpoint I put together another YouTube video at the beginning, Prezi, my Elearn site, and a blog from Blogger.com. I have never done something like this in my classroom but I really think I might. I came up with the idea for this project solely but really like having the students in my class complete something like this. I find it very important to have students understand why we learn economics and how important it is in their lives every single day. I may tweek it a little or change some of it but as a whole I am excited about using it next semester.

Amazon Book Reviews

2011-06-08T13:07:00.000-07:00

Here are the links to the Collins and Richardson book reviews that I posted on Amazon. All great reads and I think that any parent or educator with questions about technology should really take a look at them. They answer some questions that many people may have about using or creating different software or programs on the web!

http://www.amazon.com/Blogs-Wikis-Podcasts-Powerful-Classrooms/product-reviews/1412977479/ref=cm_cr_dp_all_helpful?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending

http://www.amazon.com/Rethinking-Education-Technology-Education-Connections-Education-Connections/product-reviews/0807750026/ref=cm_cr_dp_all_summary?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending

Value of Google Docs

2011-06-02T17:21:00.001-07:00

To be honest I have never used Google Docs before so this was a brand new experience for me. I think that it was great in terms of educational value. It is just like the PBworks Wiki that we completed however, Google Docs seemed a bit easier for me to use. You didn’t really have to create anything just have an active email account and that got you in. No sign in or password which I liked. This is great because a lot of the kids in my classroom don’t really have email addresses, so when we complete things sometimes they have to make up fake ones and it is a big deal. But with Google Docs you just get on and go, I didn’t even need to really learn how to do it because it was so self explanatory, and this is also what my kids need. Some of them don’t do really well with directions and confusing software, after using this I know that I will use it in my classroom next year. I can make it like a discussion board for the students to use and talk and change. I really love the idea of having something like this even less confusing than a blog or Wiki. In terms of educational value of things that I have learned in this class this one ranks up there, just because it really is something that I can utilize in my classroom and that makes me happy!

Link to Google Docs

2011-06-02T17:12:00.000-07:00

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Mr4YWN6dA_4hKuCRMzoC7faAlXs5688_Iv0iWNcAq0A/edit?hl=en_US

Here is the links to our Google Docs page for all of our groups book reviews.

Individual Book Reviews

2011-06-02T17:09:00.000-07:00

Here are my 6 individual book reviews, I thought that they all were worthwhile reads and as an educator they were especially beneficial to me.

Collins Chapter 9

In this chapter “What Does It All Mean?” it explains why students should use technology and what benefits it gives them and what the parents should be looking for and encouraging in their children with school and technology. This section stated that the emergences of technology based learning environments require parents along with teachers to pay attention to how and what children learn outside of school and the home. Not only can the parents and teachers raise awareness of the new technologies they can also begin to appreciate the range of new skills that kids develop when they get to start using these technologies in school and at home. The chapter also talks about how technology is a large threat to children of school age, but also one of the greatest opportunities that they will have to do what they want. Technology has become an economic engineer that students and parents can use to their advantage. Teachers are being pressured to change their traditional classrooms into ones that integrate technology so that they are not left behind when the students know more about the technology than them. There will still be parts of the traditional classrooms they will just be implemented in different ways, like math homework will still be math homework it will just be done online and scored immediately. The one thing that has school holding back is the funding or lack of it in schools across America.

Collins Chapter 10 (Tester)

In this chapter it starts out talking about needing a new change and vision for education, this can be done through technology. In an economy like the one that we are in today we need economic success not only for individuals, but also for our country as a whole. This can be done through education involving technology. The gap between countries and what they have and don’t is only getting bigger, and not smaller. Education is moving outside of the schools walls while using these new forms of technology, but we need to focus on improving the schools not just getting the technology to them. One of the main goals for education reform is to rethink how we motivate our children to learn, and fortunately technology helps with this because students are more driven when using technology in the classroom. While rethinking how to get the students ready to learn and use technology to do this we also need to rethink what is actually taught content wise to them. In an age with many technological resources what is best to teach them and how? Is traditional the best content for students or new skills invoked rich with technology better? Whatever the answer these two are not usually looked at together by educators, it is mostly one or the other. Communication and math are very big in today’s competitive economy but is this the best route to take in education or should we stick with the traditional reading and writing? Careers and what we do in jobs are also rapidly changing, and our educational system in one way or another needs to keep up!

Richardson Chapter 3 (Tester)

This chapter is about how all parents, students, and administrators are clear on why this technology is being used in the classroom. For parents the first thing that they can do to make sure their child is safe is give their student permission to use this technology for school. Most schools send home an acceptable use sheet to sign and parents should be aware of this and make sure that they get one. Parents also need to communicate with teachers about what the teacher is doing to make sure that student privacy is protected. Parents need to make sure they talk to their children about never putting personal information on the blogs and the parents also need to know the process for reporting problems with blog content. Lastly as a parent they need to oversee the student’s blog and then decide what to do with it at the end of the course. When creating a weblog with students always start small and work your way up. Blogger.com created by Google is one of the easiest weblogs for anyone to use, there is no perfect way to use a blog but this one is up there for ease of use and not a lot of confusion. As a teacher it is hard to track all of what your students are doing, however, you can follow your students and watch their posts. You can edit and have different templates and even add pictures to blogs as well.

Richardson Chapter 4 (Tester)

This chapter is about Wikis and how easy it is for all people who are a part of one to collaborate on it. It starts out by introducing Wikipedia and what a great and easy website it is to use; a wealth of knowledge that people have come together to share. The wiki part of the word comes from the Hawaiian word wiki wiki which means quick. It is an easy authoring tool with over 3 million entries at this point in English. A person can fix, erase, or add just about anything they would like with the original author being able to change it back at any time. One could say that Wikipedia is the original poster child for collaborative construction of knowledge and web based interaction. Businesses use Wiki’s to keep track of their work and teachers and students are using it as blog based sites. If teachers are using Wikipedia in school they should definitely check the accuracy before they have their students look at the site page and they also should be aware of the fact that Wikipedia is a collaborative site, meaning not one person has written the whole thing by themselves. As a teacher you can create an online text for your curriculum with a Wiki that your students can contribute to. This could become a resource for best practices and something that other teachers and their students could use as well. The chapter then gives examples of Wikis in classrooms some that have been very successful right here in Georgia! Creating a Wiki as a teacher is fairly easy and once you get the hang of it you can do great things in the classroom.

Dixon Email (Tester)

The Dixon book was unlike any I had really ever read before; however I thought that it was very helpful when learning to use different types of social media. I really actually enjoyed the pictures because I learn from seeing other people and examples of things and so it was perfect. The first chapter that I looked at was the chapter titled “Email.” At the beginning of the chapter I was actually surprised that the book said most people didn’t use email efficiently. I thought that was interesting because to me, there really isn’t a whole lot to do on email and I would think everyone uses it the same. Dixon gives four steps in the emailing process, select all, star the important stuff, archive the rest, and review the stars. He also states that you should have at least two important folders, one for things you will read someday and the other for waiting for someone to respond. To be in education three tips about emailing are check it less frequently, set up filtering rules, and try and keep your email program closed. Lastly some advanced emailing tips are here have email groups, set up smart subjects, have a catch all account, and have a context based email address. I found these tips very useful and was happy to say that I actually already do some of them! Dixon really brings out some common sense things but they may be things that people overlook and really are quite helpful.

Dixon Cell Phones (Tester)

As a teacher and just someone who is on the go a lot my cell phone is my go to for anything business or family related. After reading Dixon’s chapter on cell phones I could really appreciate what my actual cell phone could do for me if I had it all organized and actually new all the capabilities that it has to offer me! In the chapter Dixon starts off by talking about how people use cell phones and how we are more accessible now than we used to be because of them. With a cell phone you can really get a hold of anyone, anytime, anywhere. If your school or you personally have a Facebook page you can update this through your cell phone now, and you can also use your cell phone to collaborate with parents also. Some principles have started using text messages to let parents know different things about the school such as weather reports and school functions that are going on; such a quick and easy way to get a message to so many people in just a few clicks of a button. As a teacher or administrator you should give out your personal cell phone number to parents and put a personal approach on things with an email signature or business card for your school. If you don’t feel comfortable giving parents your personal cell phone number you can always set up a voicemail hotline or Skype or even K7 Net which is similar to Skype. Another effective tool for engaging your school community is text message marketing and even though a lot of schools don’t allow students to have cell phones in the classrooms a great way to get students engaged is through mobile polling. If the students use this mobile polling they can answer and ask questions and give their opinion while sitting at their desks and using their cell phones.

Dixon Book Review

2011-06-02T17:07:00.000-07:00

I really enjoyed Dr. Dixon's book. I gave it a 5 star review on Amazon! Here is my review along with a link to check it out online.

http://www.amazon.com/Innovative-School-Leaders-Guide-Social/dp/1456554174/ref=pd_rhf_p_t_1

I thought that the Brian Dixon book Social Media was very enlightening. I use all of these types of communication on a daily basis but I never think of the things that he mentioned. They are common sense ideas that we can use in our everyday lives as well as in the classroom if we are educators. I also thought that the use of pictures in his book was great, I am someone who learns from watching and the fact that I could step by step see how to implement something in emails or blogs was awesome. Every teacher, parent, and student should read this book at least once and keep it with them in case they ever decide to use one of these great resources.

Really Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works

2011-05-24T09:16:00.000-07:00

For the project based lesson the Web 2.0 tool I will be using is Prezi. I found it to be fairly easy to learn how to use and am really getting the hang of it. I also found that it was interesting to watch and really keeps people’s attention! I also may incorporate a Venn diagram using gliffy when comparing and contrasting my subjects. My lesson will be geared towards a 12^th grade economics class which is what I currently teach at my high school. I will be completing a compare and contrast lesson on Monetary and Fiscal Policy. These are two concepts that my students have a very hard time understanding and so I always do something like this over and over to help them get it. Both Monetary and Fiscal Policy are in both Georgia Economic standards but in all high school economics standards and benchmarks. The 21^st century skills that will be assessed in the lesson are: critical thinking, problem solving, self-direction, financial, economic, and entrepreneurial literacy, communication, information literacy, and collaboration. The instructional strategies that are to be used in the lesson are identifying similarities and differences, homework and practice, reinforcing effort and providing recognition, cues, questions and advanced organizers, and lastly summarizing and note taking. This is really a lesson that my students can relate to and get a handle on so that they can understand this concept better. The graphic organizers are a large part of this understanding. I am also hoping to use some stories to help them remember what each policy does, I just have to think of them first. Attached is a rubric that will be used to score the creation for the video assignment.

Appendix B: Rubric for Scoring 5-minute Project-based Learning Launch “YouTube” Video

Scoring Rubric – 100 point scale (100 = 30/30)

Page 1 of 2:

Project Based Learning Launch “YouTube” Video:

Little Effort		Acceptable Effort	Above and beyond
20pts	Effort – it appeared that the researcher put limited time and thought in the design of lesson plan and creation of the launch video.	Effort – it was evident that the researcher put the appropriate amount of time and thought into either the design of lesson plan and creation of the launch video, but not both.	Effort – the researcher demonstrated the significant effort throughout the design and execution of the lesson plan and in crafting a launch video that captures the attention and imagination of her/his students.
10pts	Instructional Strategy – the researcher’s lesson plans lacked a clear instructional strategy.	Instructional Strategy – the researcher’s lesson plan defined the learning objectives, desired outcomes, and the instructional strategies used in the PBL lesson plan, but did not clearly define these in the video.	Instructional Strategy – the researcher clearly identified the “classroom instruction that works” strategy used in lesson planning and clearly defined learning objectives, desired outcomes, and instructional strategies in the launch video.
10pts	Media/Technology – the researcher did not use the appropriate technology or did not effectively use the technology for delivering planned instruction.	Media/Technology – the researcher used technology but did not effectively explain why she/he selected the technology used in delivering planned instruction.	Media/Technology – the researcher explained how she/he determined which technology she/he chose for the particular lesson, explained expectations for use. The lesson plan included external citations supporting the use of this technology.
10pts	Template – the researcher did not use or substantially use the PBL lesson planning template provided by the instructor.	Template – the researcher used the PBL lesson planning template provided by the instructor, but left out portions of information needed to carry out the lesson, e.g., no mention of survival skills.	Template – the researcher used the PBL lesson planning template to thoughtfully lay out and explain the lesson she/he would delivering. Additional care and concern were taken to explain methodologies, approaches, and expected outcomes.
10pts	Rubric – the researcher did not include a detailed rubric for measuring academic outcomes or demonstrated survival skills.	Rubric – the researcher included a rubric for measuring academic outcomes and/or demonstrated survival skills, but it was not detailed and/or thoughtfully constructed, or did not include in launch video.	Rubric – the researcher included a detailed rubric for measuring academic outcomes or demonstrated survival skills that were thoughtfully constructed. He/she included an explanation of the rubric in video.

Appendix B: Rubric for Scoring 5-minute Project-based Learning Launch “YouTube” Video

Page 2 of 2: Make to Stick

Little Effort		Acceptable Effort	Above and beyond
10pts	Simple and Unexpected – the researcher did not effectively summarize the outcomes of her/his comparative lesson study such that audience had a clear understanding of the researcher’s findings. The presentation contained no unexpected findings made during the comparative lesson study.	Simple and Unexpected – either the researcher effectively summarized the outcomes of her/his comparative lesson study such that audience had a clear understanding of the researcher’s findings, OR the presentation contained unexpected findings made during the comparative lesson study, but not both.	Simple and Unexpected – the researcher crystallized his/her hypothesis and related findings by defining the essential truth she/he discovered. Presentation left the audience with an understanding of how what the researcher learned could improve their own practice. The researcher used an unexpected finding to engage the audience and used the gap in the audience’s knowledge to drawn them in and teach them something they didn’t already know.
10pts	Concrete and Credible– the presentation lacked concrete definitions of the researcher’s findings. The work presented lacked internally or externally credible sources to support her/his findings.	Concrete and Credible – the presentation contained partial definitions of the researcher’s findings. The work presented either contained internally or externally credible sources to support the study’s findings, but not both.	Concrete and Credible – the presentation contained concrete definitions of the researcher’s findings and provided actionable steps so that the audience could apply the findings in their own practice. By expertly combining internal and external sources, the researcher demonstrated her/his findings’ credibility
10pts	Emotion and Story – the presentation lacked energy or passion needed to engage the audience. The researcher did not include a story in his / her presentation to convey the experience gained from the comparative lesson study.	Emotion and Story – the researcher used energy and / or passion to engage the audience. The researcher included at least one story in his / her presentation to convey the experience gained from the comparative lesson study.	Emotion and Story – the researcher drew on a range of emotions and brought personal passion and energy that engaged the audience. The researcher used more than one salient story to convey the difference in learning experiences for her/his students when comparing the use of technology.
10pts	Made to Stick Survey – the researcher failed to review and comment survey responses on the three launch video assigned to her/him for review.	------------------	Made to Stick Survey – the researcher successfully to review and comment survey responses on the three launch video assigned to her/him for review.

Wikipedia PDF

2011-05-22T16:48:00.000-07:00

I couldn't get a PDF of the entire page of Wikipedia so I did a screen shot of what we added to the Social Media Page as a PDF and you can view that on our PBWorks site. The link is posted in an earlier blog.

Social Media on Wikipedia

2011-05-21T15:12:00.000-07:00

Here is my groups final product that is going to go on Wikipedia. The page that we are changing is linked here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media

Social Medias and Networking site are a part of our world. Adults and children are using them on a daily basis to communicate with friends, relatives, colleagues, and even strangers. Social Media isn’t going anyway anytime soon. “According to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey, almost ¾ of seventh to twelfth graders have at least one social media profile, and the survey group used social sites more than they played games or watched videos online. Also, you cannot ignore social medias like Facebook have grown to over 500 million users in 7 years, and I haven’t even gone into the details of sites like Myspace, Tagged, MyYearBook, Ning, Hi 5, and LinkedIn. Social media growth is exponential. (Gary, 1). How important is using technology in the classroom in today’s world? It is very important to help students learn and become ready for their futures. Pitler says that the use of technology in the classroom can have a very positive effect on student learning. Scores go up and students will actually learn more as well. His book has many suggestions for teachers and students and also has the seven categories of technologies that would be useful for parents to learn as well as their children so that they could help them when completing homework and assignments using the specific resources. These seven categories are multimedia, web resources, communication software, data collection tools, organizing software, spreadsheets, and word processing applications (Pitler, 2-12). Why should students use technology and what benefits does it give them? This section stated that the emergences of technology based learning environments require parents along with teachers to pay attention to how and what children learn outside of school and the home. Not only can the parents and teachers raise awareness of the new technologies they can also begin to appreciate the range of new skills that kids develop when they get to start using these technologies in school and at home (Collins, 122-123).

Here are five easy tips to ensure students safety from the article, “We should talk-what are you doing to ensure student safety online?” by Ronnie Burt. In the article he explains how schools can prepare students to be safe users of the internet as well as how teachers should teach them. #1 is to set clear guidelines. Teacher and the school system has to set clear guidelines for students and parent on the expectation and appropriate behavior of students on blogs and social networking sites used for educational purposes. #2 is whether to use a student's name. Decide if you are going to use codenames, first or last names only. Full names are not suggested unless the blog or social networking site is listed as private. #3 is the use of Photos. Teacher allowing students to use photos of themselves is not suggested. You must have parental consent to post pictures of students for the site anyway. Using photo opens many door for legal issues with the school system and parental concerns. Stay away from the issue to keep students protected. Next #4 is whether to have Public or Private accounts. A private setting will definitely keep the unwanted visitors that may cause harm to your site and students but it limits the global learning aspect from visitors to comment on blogs. This may even limit friends and family from being able to see the work of students. Finally #5 deals with student work and confidentially. Commenting on blogs and social media sites are expected but remember that they are left for others to see and be careful not to put comments that refer to grades and assessing of a students work out in the open. (Burt, 1).

How can parents keep their children safe online when they are using social media and the internet for educational purposes and in their everyday lives? Safe internet use starts with good parental involvement. Parents need to make sure that they set guidelines and that they are involved and guide their child through the online world the same way they would in their everyday lives. Some suggestions this article gives for parents to go by is to create a family agreement for internet use, place the computer in a central and open location, look at the sites your child visits, block offensive sites, encourage your child to tell you if anyone is asking for personal information, talk to your child about potential online dangers, steer them away from chat rooms, and tell them that talking to a stranger on the internet is no different the talking to one in person (Lynn, 3-4). For parents the first thing that they can do to make sure their child is safe is give their student permission to use this technology for school. Most schools send home an acceptable use sheet to sign and parents should be aware of this and make sure that they get one. Parents also need to communicate with teachers about what the teacher is doing to make sure that student privacy is protected. Parents need to make sure they talk to their children about never putting personal information on the blogs and the parents also need to know the process for reporting problems with blog content. Lastly as a parent they need to oversee the student’s blog and then decide what to do with it at the end of the course (Richardson, 46-47).

Some examples of keeping students safe when using social media in education is a high school in Minnesota that wanted to open up a school Facebook page. What the teachers and parents encountered was that Facebook wasn’t the safest place for their children to be, that most social media sites aren’t made with security in mind; they go on communication and ease of use. To use Facebook one only has to be 13, and in the end the school decided to use Google Apps for Education with Google Docs because their main platform is education for kids while keeping them safe. They asked Facebook if they would create a “Facebook App for Education” so that educators could interact and engage with students but Facebook declined to create one. The school has also started using Edmondo which is a way for teachers to safely share the web with their students and can be turned on and off by administrators. Since the parents and teachers did research on the safety of their students they made it possible for the students to use social media in education, but also made sure they were protected. (McGraw, 52).

Schools and teachers aren’t the only people to have to worry about social media and their jobs. Many companies including Delta Air Lines and Google have fired employees for what they wrote about work on their blogs. In 2005, over 8 million adults had blogs. Employers are becoming more aware of the risks of personal blogs and some companies are creating social media policies. A social media policy would give clear guidelines to employees so they know the rules and expectations. For example, IBM unveiled blogging guidelines for its 329,000 employees in May of 2005. The guidelines state that employees should identify themselves (and, when relevant, their roles at IBM) when blogging about IBM, and avoid ethnic slurs and controversial topics like religion (Armour, 1).

REFERENCES:

Armour, S. (2005, June 14). Warning: your clever little blog could get you fired. USA Today.

Burt, Ronnie. "We should talk-what are you doing to ensure student safety online?" Edublogs.org November 30, 2010. .

Collins, A. & Halverson, R. (2009). Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Gary, H. "Social Media A safe place for our kids?" Kid Internet Safety Guru.Com. May 4, 2011.

Lynn, K. (2011). Help to Keep Your Children Safe Online. San Diego, CA: Burnaby Now.

McGraw, G. Keeping it Clean: Introducing online Social Media into your educational mission brings you right into a hacker’s bull’s-eye. Can you ensure your learning environment stays safe? THE Journal (technological Horizons in Education). 38.1 (Jan. 2011): p52 (5). (2877 words) School Library Journal.

Pitler, Howard, et al. “Introduction.” Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works. ASCD 2007. Pages 1-14.

Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Crowd Accelerated Innovation #2 YouTube

2011-05-19T16:15:00.000-07:00

After looking at three of the Youtube videos I have come to the conclusion that 2 of them really show how Crowd Accelerated Innovation can work and one doesn’t really have any examples of it. From the first session I watched Nichole Maurer’s video where she was trying to expose students to real life problems in her math class. The students had to figure out some math problems involving cars and then come up with a vehicle proposal. She had them take math problems and turn them into practical uses, she did this in a few of her classes. The one and only example using crowd accelerated innovation was when the students collaboratively had to come up with solutions and data to justify what they had done. Other than that the students worked alone on the project and didn’t have much interaction or suggestions from each other. I definitely think that if the students had more interaction with each other they may have gotten a little more out of the project.
The Youtube video that I watched from the section session was Britt Hainstock’s from Canada. He was having his 9th grade class complete two different activities one involving one way communication and the other involving two way communication. The two way communication was a great way to give an example of crowd accelerated innovation. He had the students have a picture and had to let their partners know what it was. With the one way talking it was very difficult but with the two way talking they could listen and talk and give their partner ideas about what it was. I thought that it was a really neat experiment involving pair share and cooperative learning. This example of Crowd Accelerated Innovation really gave me some great ideas of what I can do in my own class. Lastly from the third session I watched Seanne Danielak’s video about her music class. This was another great example of a teacher using crowd accelerated innovation n class. She had her music classes play together, record and reflect on their part, recite together, and work together to better understand the musical content of what they were doing. She wanted them to have rhythm accuracy and to do this they needed to play and work together helping each other and giving each other ideas along the way. Great example of using the collective performance to better themselves and their class as a whole.

Crowd Accelerated Innovation #1 Article

2011-05-18T18:24:00.001-07:00

This article by Chris Anderson was great! To read about the people that watch the dancing videos and practice and make them better and repost was really cool. How these people are better than dancers that have taken classes from professionals is awesome. The way that the web can give us this free information is almost unlimited! TED is a free online video place where people can upload talks on the web and Chris Anderson is the creator of this. He calls this Crowd Accelerated Innovation which is a continuing upward spiral of people improving ideas and concepts via the web. I think it is neat how this is a type of motivation for some people almost like a game, they see that one person has put a really great youtube video up and then they take the time and put an even better one up. This is something that could really motivate our kids at school that we are teaching. I also really have never thought about when you put information on the web you do a better job than normal because you know that people are actually going to see it. If I am just saying something I might just go ahead and say it, but if I am posting something onto facebook or youtube I am really going to think about it and make sure that everything is correct and well done so that I don’t look like a fool in front of people that are going to read it. Chris Anderson says that since the creation of the TED talks people have started preparing more and they are of a better quality and longer, this is because people want to impress others that are watching the talks or dancing or whatever it is that they are doing.
I did find it funny that he said that youtube started out as people thinking that it was a place for fart jokes and funny kittens. Really that is exactly what I thought, but after reading this I agree with him that innovation is when groups of people come together and connect to share values and ideas. I also really thought that it was great how in the article he gave historical references to people connecting in this innovating way and sharing ideas from the traders and settlers to the urban slums and finally to now where we have online videos. This is something that has been around for ages and has just kept growing with the use of these three ingredients: A crowd, light, and lastly desire. People come together with the same desires and fuel each other’s ideas something that happens in the classroom everyday and can happen more so now with social media.

PBworks Wiki

2011-05-18T18:01:00.000-07:00

Our Group's Wiki Page :)This is the link to myself, Adrion, and Erica's Wiki page that we have created. We will be posting our assignment here about social media and the protection of the students and teachers that use it! Stay tuned.

http://edu653group1.pbworks.com

Brian Dixon Guest Speaker

2011-05-18T17:59:00.000-07:00

I really enjoyed hearing Brian Dixon speak this week. He had some good points about social networking and 2.0 technologies that many schools are using today. I liked the poll everywhere activity that we did at the beginning when we got to vote which technology we wanted to learn more about. This really is a great resource for kids to be able to use in class. Something fun for them that they can do in class, even though it is something that you could do on the board it wakes them up and keeps their attention because they get to be using their phones and different technology and not get in trouble for it. I am not a huge advocate of kids using their cell phones in the classroom, but if they are going to use them it might as well be for school and not texting their friends or doing something inappropriate. It gives the students new learning opportunities that they normally wouldn’t have pretty neat.
I also liked hearing about how social media has impacted other people’s lives in the class. It is a great way to stay in touch with your students and is usually something that they know how to use. I love using things like Facebook and Snapfish because it lets me share my life and family with the people that don’t live near me. My husband and I don’t have any family in Georgia and so it is nice to still let them be a part of our everyday lives and for free too. My kids in class love when we have speakers, I usually have about 5-8 a semester and they are usually people from colleges that come to talk about economics, college, or credit and banking. Mr. Dixon really had a great idea when he said that he had speakers follow him and his classes on Twitter and then they come to his class and can stay in touch with the students. How cool for the kids to be able to actually have the speaker and then still follow them on a social networking site. I think what Mr. Dixon is doing at his school is really a great thing!

Julia Fallon

2011-05-11T17:06:00.000-07:00

I really enjoyed the lecture by Julia Fallon on Monday! I don’t know a lot about Twitter and don’t have an account either, but it was nice to see what it is good for and what are some of the hiccups that people seem to have with it. I like to do the whole social networking thing but I have really just stuck to Facebook since it has started. Now that I have seen what I can do with Twitter I might just get into it and try it and see what I think as a user. The first thing I liked about her presentation was how she talked about actually getting into technology and how she starts people out with Google scholar and then they go to Google reader and then maybe they will be ready for Twitter. Throughout these classes I have really realized how many resources there are that teachers can use; but I have also seen how many of these are pretty complicated and actually take some time to get used to and get to know. I didn’t know that with Twitter you can only write 140 characters each time you post something; I like this idea of micro blogging and getting in what you need to say in a small amount of words. The one part that Julia mentioned that is a drawback for me at least to joining Twitter is that you can’t see what other people are writing if you aren’t following them, and that you miss out on some stuff if you don’t log on all the time. Sometimes I get on Facebook a lot and other times not for weeks. So this may not be the site for me when I am so busy. It would however, I think be a great way to get information and people’s opinions of questions for school and the like. It is always nice to hear more than one person’s opinion on something and can really get you thinking, which I think is a huge plus to Twitter.

Wikipedia & Colbert

2011-05-11T17:05:00.000-07:00

I had already seen the Steven Colbert episode with the Wikiality bit on it from the EDU 590 class that we took. However, I watched it again and took another look at it because I wanted to refresh my memory. I still have the basic same opinion as I did before. Students shouldn’t look to this site for all of their information because it could be false. However, I am a clear hypocrite because when I am looking up a quick fact I usually use Wikipedia and don’t think twice even thought the information could be wrong. Now, I wouldn’t use it for a research paper or something like that that maybe students would use it for, but for everyday questions I use it. The site isn’t blocked at my high school but the teachers do caution students when using it, most of my students actually don’t know that anyone can change information on it and write whatever they feel like, even though the original user can change it back. My school does do one thing that I believe is very important and you actually are blocked from creating an account at school. I know this because I tried to do it on Monday and it wouldn’t let me. I was able to create one at home and yes so could the students but it prevents them from doing that and writing crazy things on random pages while at school. Colbert brought up a few good points in his show about Wikipedia. He says you go against what the majority of people believe and you are crazy. If information is false on Wikipedia people may believe it just because it is there and looked at by thousands of people and not changed. Same thing with our high school kids, they may believe something is true just because it is on the internet when it could be totally wrong.
After I created an account on Wikipedia I went in and changed a pretty meaningless fact on the Law and Order SVU page (which is one of my favorite shows). I changed the “genre” from legal drama to comedy. Nothing huge but something that is obviously wrong. I did this on Tuesday and by Wednesday it was changed back. I thought that it wouldn’t take long because it is probably a page that is frequented at least a bit, but I am wondering how long it actually took since I didn’t look at it Tuesday night, just Wednesday morning. I do think that Wikipedia is a good resource but I also think that if someone is completing research or a paper of some sort they may want to look at more scholarly works to find information.

Made to Stick 2

2011-05-04T17:11:00.001-07:00

I read Made to Stick in EDU 590 and still have pretty much the same tactics in helping my students remember what we learn in class. Like I said in my previous response it is really beneficial that I teach seniors and that I teach Economics. Even though many of them won’t be going on to college the fact that they want to get out on their own helps them at least try and remember things we talk about in class. Many of these things will really pertain to their lives in the near future and that is helpful. Principle 5 that has to do with emotions would be a part of this. The students that I teach are going out into a world that they may not be familiar with so when we complete resumes and go over how to fill out tax forms it hits close to home for them and they will remember that kind of stuff. We don’t like the unknown and since these are things that they will have to do they want to know and learn how to do them.
Another one of the principles that I use in my class is the 6th principle about stories. Students really do love to hear funny or crazy stories and sometimes I know that they really work. When we talk about taxes in class and why you have to pay them I always bring up Wesley Snipes and then show a picture of his mug shot when he went to prison for not paying taxes. I then incorporate the different kind of taxes that we have to learn and incorporate more Wesley Snipes and the movie Blade. No one ever seems to forget about taxes and why they are important. It’s one of my highest scoring parts on the end of course test. Most of my students also tend to remember the black market because I use something similar to the “kidney heist” story in Made to Stick. The students really get interested when we talk about it because it involves weapons and drugs and then we talk about how it hurts our economy. They don’t forget it, I try to find other stories like these that I know would interest the students for other topics but sometimes it is hard.

Prezi Introduction

2011-05-04T17:03:00.000-07:00

Mrs. Tester on Prezi

There were some challenges for me using the Prezi software. I actually looked at both the Prezi and the Animoto and after toying with each found the Prezi to be considerably easier. I am not really a graphics person so even after watching the tutorials I had a hard time figuring things out. I would get a picture on the page and then realize when the actual presentation happened; the bodies or heads would be cut off. It actually took me the longest time to figure out how to put words in the presentation. The circles in the top left corner of the page kept disappearing on me and I couldn’t get them back. After a few trial and error runs I finally got a semi feel for it and completed my project. I think this is a great resource and that my kids in my classroom would love it. However, I also think that they would have a very hard time figuring it out. I think that I would lose a lot of class time teaching them the actual software and answering their questions. The downside would be that I couldn’t tell them to go home and figure it out and be ready the next day to use it because they don’t all have computers at home. I would either have to have a very lengthy tutorial for them and have it be word for word what I needed them to do or have a power point. I have really found over the years that if students have a hard time navigating through a technology lesson it takes them a very long time and they usually don’t get it done. With computer lab time being very scarce at my school I just don’t know if this would be something feasible that I could work into the semester. However, if the students were familiar with the program I really think that they would love it and use it often.

Lesson Plan Blog

2010-02-11T16:31:00.000-08:00

My technology and non-technology lesson plans worked out very well and I got the results that I thought I would get! I did them on monetary policy and the Federal Reserve Bank two concepts that are a little tricky for my students to grasp at times. In the past my economics students have had a hard time understanding how the three tools of monetary policy work, why the Federal Reserve prints money, and how often. We usually do in class discussion, notes, a reserve requirement simulation, and a small computer activity on the Federal Reserve government website. However, this time I tweaked the assignment and had one of my blocks complete all parts of this lesson doing in class assignments and my other two blocks using some in class discussion but going onto the computer and making their own notes and graphic organizers on a word document. These two technology blocks used www.federalreserve.gov and www.Frbatlanta.org to obtain information from. Most really loved the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta website because they can actually visit there and get to see what happens in person now!
Here are my results: Out of the 30 students that completed this lesson without technology 17 (57%) got 7 or more correct on the post test. This is a lower percent then the same type of lesson with technology. Out of the 60 students that completed the similar assignment with technology 51 (85%) got 7 or more correct on the post test. Also, the students in the technology group seemed to grasp the concepts better when we discussed and reviewed them. I correlate these higher scores with the fact that the students got to make their own notes, use graphic organizers, and use the computer, something most are familiar with, know how to use, and are always more motivated to use instead of the book because it is fun! Most of the students in the non-technology group seemed confused by the 3 Monetary Policy tools and how they are used in the economy. I only did two different activities between the two groups so I have to think that technology does enhance the lesson!

Technology, or lack there of!

2010-02-11T16:30:00.000-08:00

At my high school it is always difficult to get time in the computer labs or media center, so completing my technology lesson plan was not the easiest thing to accomplish. We have a total of 1,700 students at our high school in Georgia. We have no laptop cart or anything like that and only two available computer labs and 15 in the media center. I have 30 students, 90 total, in each one of my blocks so I can’t take only half my kids to the media center and leave the other half in the room doing nothing. Also, the two computer labs that are available to us are only open about two weeks a month, and they fill up fast, because all of our tests (the EOCT, GHSGT, ASVAB, Credit Recovery, and re-takes of all these) are done in those two labs during the school day. I actually don’t think that I could have gotten this same assignment done had I not been able to use a fellow coach’s computer lab. One of my track coaches is the business teacher here and she has a smart board and 30 computers in her classroom. I begged her to let me use her room and so for two days her kids came into my classroom for class and mine went to hers. She has updated technology on her computers and it was great for my students to get to experience that! I wish we could have more technology but with all the budget issues our county is having now there really is no way for that to happen.
I also told my principal about the courses that I am taking. She was very supportive and said that anything that I need that she can help out with she would do her best to get it to me. She agreed that we should have more resources and technology tools for the kids here and the only way to do that at this point is by writing grant after grant after grant!

Cyber School

2010-02-11T16:29:00.000-08:00

Without sounding too harsh, I actually disagree with most of what the article states and with the idea of a complete cyber school experience as a teen. As I read through the article I definitely agree that high school isn’t for everyone. I know that some students are not going to go on to college and they need to do something that is a good fit for them to be able to succeed, but high school isn’t only about learning information, it’s about learning to be social, and interacting with others, and conforming to rules. Something that in the real world YOU HAVE TO DO! Unless you are going to be a hermit and sit in your house for your entire life looking at a computer screen how is this teaching you any part of life’s lessons? I go to work everyday and there may be rules I don’t like (we can’t wear open toed shoes as teachers) and people I don’t agree with who are in charge of me, but I am not going to just quit so I can get a shiny new iMac and log on and I quote, “for a minute a day.” How is logging on for a minute a day some days teaching teens time management skills, or social interaction?
Arthur Carter writes, “In this modern age of technology, we are no longer confined to a box where you have 30 seats and a teacher in front.” What? So my classroom is a box with some seats? First of all my classroom is a fun learning environment, a safe haven for some of these kids, a social place of interaction, a place to stomp out ignorance, a place of student focused learning where I guide the students, not a box with me standing at the front. Basically that statement just discredited the whole profession of teaching in a classroom. How is this preparing students for life’s next step whatever it may be? Whether it’s a job, trade school, university, or junior college these kids can’t just quite these things and get a free computer so they can sit at home or in a lab somewhere at night.
I feel like these students are being rewarded for dropping out of school. The public education system has worked for over 150 years why fix it now if it’s not broken? If I don’t agree with the rules of the United States government I can either go somewhere else where there are still going to be rules or go to prison, not to my room or the computer lab with my brand new iMac.
I do think that some students need a different type of learning environment so why can’t the students go to alternative school for half a day and then do this cyber school, or go to public school for half a day and then go to a skills center and learn a trade or work on the computer. I think that this concept is a good idea but not for an entire high school experience. There are always things and people in life that we aren’t going to agree with and I definitely think that having students use technology more and more is important but I feel the setting still should be in a school environment for the most part.
I know that I am taking an all online masters course which is at my own pace, however, I have gone to high school and done that just like every one else and been in that type of environment so I feel like I have already gained the social and organizational skills needed for life and I am paying for it with my hard earned money! I think these students should have a chance to learn, and maybe I am not hearing the whole story here, but sometimes you have to do things you don't want to, to get to a place where you do want to be. It's called life.

Joe's Non-Notebook

2010-02-07T10:41:00.000-08:00

I actually loved the video! It kind of follows up on a comment I had when we did the Wikipedia blog assignment. I think technology is such a great tool for students in any level of school and if you have a laptop really can be used anywhere, but I also think that it is important for them to know and use books as well. When completing the Wikipedia assignment I said that most students in today’s society wouldn’t know what or how to use a card catalogue or the Dewey decimal system in a library or media center.
I think that the Internet is a very valuable resource but we shouldn’t eliminate books just because using the World Wide Web is easier and more accessible for many students. Incorporating both into projects and class assignments is what I try and do in my classroom. Many of my students don’t understand why we even have a classroom text because some teachers don’t ever have them open it all semester. Furthermore, some of my kids have no idea what a glossary or index is because they are so used to looking up vocabulary on the internet at home. I try and have a healthy balance between technology, resources, and text in my classroom. If we all had 33 computers in every classroom it would be another story, many of my kids don’t have access to computers outside of school so the text is a great base for the work we do on the computer and in class.
Being able to supplement concepts in the book with power points, internet research, simulations using smart boards, and video clips with the projector are a great way to differentiate instruction and make class more interesting and fun. However, the kids can’t take all of these tools home so I don’t think the text should ever be completely eliminated or to the point where kids don’t know how to look up ideas and people in the glossary or index.

Made To Stick

2010-01-28T13:55:00.002-08:00

I definitely agree that one of the hardest challenges to overcome as a teacher is getting the students to remember the information that we teach! No matter how many times we review material there always seem to be students that just can’t remember it. I really enjoyed reading the introduction to the book, “Made To Stick” by Chip and Dan Heath. I also went to their website and read the Time Magazine article written about them and the book. Both gave me some really good ideas about helping my students retain information for unit tests and our end of course test. In my classes I use the “Know what your listeners care about, so you can tailor your communication to them.” This is actually easy to do in my class because most of my students are 18 and about to be paying bills, paying taxes, writing checks, having the opportunity to get credit cards, living on their own, earning money, and signing up for bank accounts.

However, this doesn’t always work for me. Students don’t normally care about GDP, fiscal policy, and the like. The six principles gave me some good ideas as to how I can help my students remember economic information that may not be so pertinent to their everyday lives. Many of my kids love to tell stories so making the information like a story seems like a really good idea. We try to do activities that help them remember content but we don’t have time for an activity for every concept so a story would take less time and probably work well. Many of our simulations go along with principle four: credibility and the “try before you buy” philosophy. If the students can act out something and see the benefit they usually will remember it.

Google Wave

2010-01-28T13:55:00.001-08:00

I think that this program sounds like a great idea on paper, and if the students had all the resources and the training to use it, it could be a wonderful tool for them and the teacher! I don’t know exactly what it is but from reading the e-school news article and looking it up online it sounds similar to the Skype program people are using to communicate now. I would actually need to see the program and some examples of students using it to make a final assessment of its educational worth. I also had a few questions concerning it after reading the article. Would it be something for the students to use at home or at school? What technology would the students need to use it?

My perception of the article is that if students had access to this at home they would need a computer, webcam, microphone, chat capabilities, and the same software and versions of software as the other people in their groups. This could be a very pricey undertaking for each household that chooses to use it. What if four kids in a group have Microsoft power point and the fifth one doesn’t? To have all the students be able to collaborate on a project using Google Wave seems a bit far fetched to me. Again, I think that it sounds like an awesome idea and would really motivate the students to be creative and give 100% on assignments because it would be fun for them to use. I just don’t know how feasible it is going to be if it is mainly used at home as opposed to at school.

E-Learn

2010-01-28T13:53:00.000-08:00

As a current student and teacher in the education field I always find it useful to be able to quick get online and check due dates for courses etc, especially if I have missed a class or didn’t quite understand a handout. We have a website in our county for exactly this purpose and it is called E-learn. It is a great way for students and parents to be able to quickly log on and check what is due, when a test/quiz is, how to contact a teacher, and anything else you can think of. The teachers at my high school took a professional learning day and went to training at the board office so that we all have the opportunity to make one.

I have links on mine to some great economic websites and our grade book link as well, which is very helpful because it is just one more way to hold the students and parents accountable for being informed on current grades. The students can blog on the website, have debates/discussion, you can upload video, put assignments and notes in PDF form for when students are absent so they know what went on in each class. I keep mine fairly simple, but it is a great resource and really helps the students in my classes. Attached is the link to my E-learn site for this semester for anyone who would like to take a look! Go to the link and click on High, Alcovy, scroll down to Cari Tester (not the one for Carissa Tester) and click on my name, log in as guest, the enrollment key is scarcity, and then click enroll.

http://elearn.newton.k12.ga.us/

2010 Michigan State Educational Technology Plan

2010-01-28T13:23:00.000-08:00

After reviewing the Michigan Technology Plan and completing the online survey I think the plan will be very instrumental in helping students achieve success in all levels of K-12 education. Furthermore, I think that all goals of the plan will help parents stay in tune with what their kids are doing in school and help teachers find more creative successful ways to teach. I like how the five goals of the plan are specific and to the point and then a small summation is provided to further expand the goals but it is not so long that one gets lost in the reading.
The goal that I can most appreciate as a teacher of seniors is goal 1, strategy 2.

Goal 1, Strategy 2:
“MDE will provide available and appropriate resources necessary to give all students access to effective technology-enabled learning environments, including assistive technologies, and increase opportunities for students to participate in project-based, challenge-based, and “real world” learning experiences, especially as these experiences relate to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.”
Having more opportunities to let these students experience "real world" simulations right before they go out on their own is very beneficial to them. In my economics classroom we play a stocks game online throughout the semester, complete simulations on the Federal Reserve website, fill out blank checks and balance fake checking accounts on personal finance websites, and much more. If we didn't have the available computer labs and resources none of this would be possible for them. My students love playing on the computer as any kid does and being able to practice skills that they will need very soon in their lives is so neat to watch. The motivation level and appeal for economics increases as we get into these units and it is actually a lot more fun for me to teach when the kids are intellectually challenged.
The website to our stocks game is listed below. Go to the site then just click on the stock market game. If anyone wants to check it out, it really is a great site!

http://www.gcee.org

Wikipedia

2010-01-16T13:33:00.000-08:00

Our school’s policy on Wikipedia is that it is a questionable resource and students are highly discouraged from using it. They can technically look information up on it, but it is at their own risk if the facts they are receiving are correct or not. I myself use Wikipedia occasionally, but never for research papers or anything of the like. For the most part if I need to look up a quick fact or concept that I am semi-knowledgeable about I will go to it as my first source. However, if I know nothing about an idea or issue or person I would not use it because I would never know if it was correct or not. I do agree with my school’s policy and do not think that students should be able to use it as a research tool in K-12 education.

The first reason I don’t think that Wikipedia should be used in the classroom is because plain and simple it may not be factual. I don’t want kids looking up information on the internet and receiving false data. Even at the age of 18 my students are very impressionable and naïve. They don’t question many things, if something is said then for most of them it automatically becomes fact. I could tell my kids just about anything and they would believe it because I am an adult and a teacher. Same with the internet, most think that if it is on the internet it must be correct.

Another reason is because many of my kids are lazy and not very motivated. I can honestly say that even if some of my students knew the information could be wrong they most likely wouldn’t go to another source to check, they would rather take the risk of having the wrong data than to go the extra mile and check other sources. I would want to eliminate that possibility all together and have them only check sources that are creditable in the first place……like books! Don’t get me wrong, I love the internet and think it is a great resource, but I also think that in the K-12 classroom today books have kind of been put to the side. It is so easy to look up information on the internet that many children only know how to do that. If I asked most of my students they would have no idea what the Dewey decimal system is or how to use a card catalogue.

One of the reasons that I feel Wikipedia should not be used in the K-12 classroom is because it promotes de-individuation. In the clip “Wikiality” Steven Colbert says, “you go against what the majority believes and you are crazy.” I interpret this to mean that if you look on Wikipedia and see that 5,000 people say something is fact, even if you don’t believe it is, saying something will make you look different or wrong. Even though you know it isn’t the correct fact most kids probably wouldn’t say anything because in this day and age being different or unique isn’t the cool or accepted thing. As a teacher of 17 and 18 year olds I can say that all of this rings very true to what I don’t want for my students. Too many kids in my classroom are scared to be individuals because they don’t want to look dumb or different. Many students think that if they share their opinion, even if what they say is correct or valuable to classroom discussion they will be made fun of or chastised. It is good to stand up for what you think is right, something that in my high school is very lacking.