Digital Storytelling - Week Five

I find this lesson very interesting, especially in regards to rubrics. In one sense, I feel like we as teachers have been rubriced (is that a word?) to death, but I really like rubrics and I use them a lot in my teaching. My district is in the process of switching to all standards-based grading, which actually led us to develop MORE rubrics, since we had to do away with our normal percents and letter grades. However, I have always used them to assess the students myself, making sure that I show the rubric ahead of time so my students know what I expect of them from the very beginning. I don't usually use rubrics for students' self-assessment or peer assessment, and I kind of feel stupid for not using it that way. After reading the articles for this week, I realize that having students use the rubrics for their own assessment would really save me time on grading, as well as holding the students accountable for their own learning and really growing through receiving feedback from their peers.

Digital Storytelling - Week Four

One thing I really enjoyed this week is the Presentation Zen video. Although I didn't really understand all the Judo connections, the things he was saying about delivery of presentation were very intriguing. I, for one, have been in many meetings where the presentor doesn't know when to stop. I do not want to be one of those people! My favorite thing about the video was the outtakes at the end. It really showed us a whole other side of Garr, which made him seem more personable and not like quite such a stiff shirt. I wish I had seen the outtakes before I read the book. I think I would have had a whole different perspective on his teachings if I had.

This week's work although interesting, seems totally overwhelming. While I'm learning a lot about presentation, I feel that I would be learning a lot more if the weekly workload was not so huge. I find myself rushing through assignments so I have time to get through each one. I rarely have time to look at the extra things at the beginning of each session's work. I know they are very valuable and could probably teach me a lot, but I go to the things that are going to be graded and do them first. When all the graded assignments are done, it's Wednesday again and we start a new week. I'm not trying to complain, because I'm really enjoying everything I'm learning in this class and will use every bit of it in when doing presentations in the future. I just wish I had a little more time on each assignment so I could do my best work.

Digital Storytelling - Week Three

I have mixed feelings about this week's lesson. First, I am very excited to try Animoto. I applied for my educator's account, and am now waiting to hear when my account has been approved so I can get started. After watching the Presentation Zen video, I was very anxious to start modifying my old presentation to fit the Zen recommendations. However, this is where I got hung up. When we were asked to post an old presentation last week, I chose the worst one of mine I could find, which was a presentation I was assigned to do in an earlier class in this cohort. However, I've realized that the presentation I chose was really an essay put on slides. So when I tried to modify it, everything I had on my slides would now go on my handout, and I have nothing left on my slides; no opportunities to insert a graph or picture anywhere! I am wishing I had chosen a different presentation in the first place, but I haven't really done a Powerpoint in years, other than the ones I've done for this cohort. I guess I'm kind of stuck!

Digital Storytelling - Week Two

There are many ways in which I can use Digital Storytelling in what I do. I teach third graders, and I wish I had known half of this information when I did my nursing home project last year! I decided to integrate technology into a project I had done for a few years. Each year my students are paired up with nursing home residents whom they interview and get to know over the course of the school year. They use the information they learn about their residents to write a biography of their lives, which they present to their residents at the end of the school year. The residents love it, and my students get to learn from members of our elderly community, which is something that many of them would never have experienced otherwise. Last year I decided to upgrade the project and have them make movies about their residents using Windows MovieMaker. However, I didn't know anything about Digital Storytelling yet, and I hadn't really researched MovieMaker enough, either. My kids enjoyed the project, but it didn't really turn out like I planned. I really think the knowledge from this class would make the difference with this project.

I would also like to use VoiceThread with my students. I think it could really help them with their math processes, for instance, if I gave them a problem and had them each tell how they solved it, like we saw on some of the example Voice Threads. This is just one of the MANY ways I could use Voice Thread in my classroom.

I will also definitely use all the information I've learned about my previous PowerPoint presentations and where I've gone wrong. When presenting to my colleagues or the school board, or my classmates in this cohort, I will be able to apply all I've learned from Presentation Zen to improve my presentations so I don't bore my audience to death.

Digital Storytelling - Week One

WOW! I really have a lot of mixed feelings about this first lesson. I am very excited to learn more about Digital Storytelling and how I can use it in my classroom. I am especially excited to do the first group assignment, which is to make a list of 15 sites that have copyright free audio, video, graphics, and pictures. I am always looking for sites that I can direct my students to for using copyright free materials in their presentations. I do talk to my third graders about copyright, and I have often wished that I just had a list of resources to point them to when doing their own projects and presentations. Now I will have that; very exciting!
The reason for my mixed feelings is the amount of work for each week. I'm having a hard time fitting it all in this week, and I am just coming off a four day weekend. I'm wondering how I will ever get it done with a full week of work! I am really learning a lot, I'm just really feeling stressed about getting all this done in a week.

Week 5 Post

Reading the textbook for this class has definitely helped me become a better teacher, as it has given me heightened awareness about using each of these very important strategies in my classroom on a daily basis. The first, and definitely easiest, thing I've done, is to start using A LOT more stickers and stamps on my students' work to reinforce their effort. It's amazing how much that little token means to them, and the fact that I can praise their effort, even if they didn't succeed with the highest grade they would have liked to get. Considering the fact that Identifying Similarities and Differences showed such measurable improvements in test scores, I have recently been giving that strategy a lot of attention also. I use any chance I can get to call attention to similarities and differences in every subject I am teaching, and therefore teach the students to do the same. I have also taken a new approach to Providing Feedback to my students. I used to simply give a "Good Job" or "Great" on an assignment for feedback. I have recently been making more of an effort to give specific feedback when I'm walking around helping students, and also putting more specific comments on their papers.

The main thing that excites me about incorporating more of these strategies is integrating them with technology. I have picked up SO MANY great technology ideas and sites through this class, that each Thursday I can't wait to get to school and try them with my students! Just having the interaction with other professionals who are using the same text and taking the same class has been very beneficial to me. The collaboration is awesome! I have learned way more from my classmates than I would have learned if I had simply read this book on my own! Thanks everyone!

Week 4 Strategies

Identifying Similarities and Differences
Identifying Similarities and Differences is very important for getting students to apply the knowledge we have taught them to real situations. I did an activity for this the first week of school this year in order to get to know my students better. I asked each of my students during Morning Meeting what their favorite foods were. After collecting all the data, we organized our foods by category and put them into Venn diagrams to identify the similarities and differences between all the foods. I used the Notebook software for my SMARTBoard to create the diagrams. I thought the lesson went very well and my students picked up the Venn diagram very quickly.
When I was reading about this strategy this week, I came across so many great ideas for how I could use this strategy in my classroom. I would like to start entering some of our data in Microsoft Excel and then make graphs to incorporate Identifying Similarities and Differences between our data sets. We do a Sunrise and Sunset chart for Everyday Math, and I think it would be great to put that data into Microsoft Excel like they mentioned in the book so the kids can see how the length of day changes and make note of the patterns.

Homework and Practice
The purpose of Homework and Practice is for students to apply and continue practicing what we have taught them in the classroom. When I first got my SMARTBoard, I created a Powerpoint game for my students to practice naming the continents and oceans of the world. Students had to drag the name of the continent or ocean onto the correct spot on the world map. When they were finished, they would click on each item they had named, and the hidden answer would be revealed so they could check their work. We always start out doing this game as a class on the SMARTBoard first, then I link the Powerpoint game to my class website so my students can go back and practice it whenever they have time. I thought this game turned out very well, and it helped my students to practice and apply what I was teaching them in Social Studies.

Generating and Testing Hypotheses
When students generate and test hypotheses, they are using higher level thinking skills and applying all of the facts and vocabulary we have taught them. I often have my students make and test hypotheses in the Science units I teach for third grade. During our rock unit I have students look at rocks, list their characteristics, and generate and test hypotheses about what each type of rock might be. We have only been using our new Sciece program for two years, so I haven't had a lot of time to incorporate technology, but I would really like to make the time to do that this year. One of my goals for my students this year was to get them to use Microsoft Excel, and I think creating spreadsheets would be an excellent activity for charting their hypotheses as they test them, instead of having them do it on paper like we have done in the past.

Reinforcing Effort

I think we should take the time to reinforce effort so that students can recognize the direct connection between their effort and their success. Some students believe that they will be successful or unsuccessful based on things like luck, their genetic background, and other things beyond their control. While those things certainly can have an effect on success, students need to be taught that their effort is the single most important factor in their success. In the past, I don't think I've done a very good job reinforcing effort in my students. I have used simple phrases like, "Good job" and "Nice try", but I need to work on being more specific in my feedback, placing special emphasis on the amount of effort they put forth, which is one of my goals this year. I have had my students chart their progress quite often, but never really thought about grading them solely on effort, or having them chart that. I found some of the rubrics in our chapter interesting, but was wondering, does anyone have any really good ideas for reinforcing effort, with technology, for elementary students?

Cooperative Learning

I think we ask students to participate in cooperative learning so that they can learn social skills as well as textbook knowledge. It's very important that our students learn to work with others and consider and respect other people's opinions. There is so much that they can learn from each other! Last year I did a project with my third graders that required them to work cooperatively to create a Powerpoint presentation on a planet I assigned to them. The actual projects turned out well, with only a few things I plan to change this year. First of all, I did not assign specific jobs to each group member, so the workload was very uneven in most groups as one student would be an overachiever and one would choose to let his partners do the work for him. Second, this year I will have the groups do their projects on an online presentation program like Slideboom so the project is not saved under any one person's name and everyone can work on it at the same time from their own computers. This way, it takes care of the problem of absenteeism, and the cooperative learning can go on no matter what. I do, however, need to look into the online programs like Slideboom a little more and find out the specifics of how to do that in a third grade classroom.

A Tale of Three Strategies

Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers:
The purpose of asking students to answer questions before beginning a topic is to get them to access their prior knowledge, as well as to get them to move their mind set from whatever they were thinking about to the topic you want them to learn about next. I think the most effective technology tool I have to approach this strategy is Kidspiration. I remember one summer I took a class on Kidspiration and decided to use it in my classroom the next year. I was using the Rapid Fire tool with my third graders for brainstorming, and it worked really well! Like most people, I can type much faster than I can write, so as they were firing ideas at me, I could keep typing them in, and with the Rapid fire feature I did not have to worry about starting a new column, or bubble, or whatever, because it automatically does that for you in Kidspiration.
Nonlinguistic Representation:
The purpose of asking students to use nonlinguistic representations is to solidify their knowledge of their content area. There seem to be a lot more visual learners out there than auditory learners, and nonlinguistic representations like graphic organizers and physical models improve student learning. Last year I decided to change a project I do every year to include nonlinguistic representations. Every year I do a project with my class that includes pairing up each student with a resident from our local nursing home, visiting them each month, and do a culminating project in which my students write a book about their residents' lives and present it to them on the last day. Last year I decided to incorporate Windows Movie Maker, and it really went well! My students LOVED taking what they learned about their residents and turning it into a movie that they made all by themselves to present to the residents on the last day. The students and the residents enjoyed the project, and it left each of them with a project that had helped enhance their learning through the frames they had created on the computer. It meant a lot more to the students than simply making a book that they would have to give away in the end.
Summarizing and Note Taking:
The purpose of teaching students summarizing and note taking is so they can take a piece of information and learn to disregard the unimportant information and condense the relevant information to put it into their own words. This seems to be one of my most difficult tasks with third graders, and I can't recall a time it has ever worked well! Summarizing and note taking are both really difficult concepts for third graders. I would like to try some of the software ideas our text mentions, like using summary frames or using the track changes feature in Microsoft Word to teach this strategy.

Feedback that Fits

I really enjoyed reading this article and could definitely relate it to my everyday teaching in third grade. Of course my goal is always to give positive feedback, but as I was reading the article I started to think about how many times I simply say, "Good job" as I'm checking on them while they are working. I need to make sure I am more specific and tell them what they are doing right, so they can be more successful in the future. I also thought about how many times per week I hand back a paper with problems marked wrong, with no real explanation for why, praise for the correct answers, or suggestions for how to improve upon the work. I feel that I'm very good at meeting with my students to give feedback about their reading and writing, but I don't follow through with that in the other subject areas as well. Now I have a goal for something else to work on!

Meta-analysis....

The Meta-analysis of the effectiveness of teaching and learning was an EXTREMELY in-depth article about the many studies that have been conducted on whether or not technology positively or negatively affects teaching and learning. This article stated that the effect was modest, at .410, which I thought was surprisingly low. In recent years I have started integrating a lot of technology into my curriculum, and I think it has had a HUGE positive effect. I agreed with some of the things stated in the article. First of all, they talked about how students are more on-task and engaged when using technology than they are when they are learning the same things without technology. I have seen this first hand several times. I have a SMARTBoard in my room, and I know that my students are much more engaged and on-task now than they were before I had it. I've also modified a lot of assignments I used to do to incorporate technology, and my students are definitely more engaged, on-task, and interested than they used to be in these assignments. Second, the article discussed how one variable is how much technology background and/or interest the teacher has. I have seen this with some of my colleagues. Some of them would like to integrate more technology, but they haven't had the training they need to learn the technology themselves. We have been talking about having after school sessions where people on staff with computer backgrounds could teach computer applications to their colleagues. Hopefully this will make technology training more accessible to them so they can gain the knowledge they need to integrate technology for their students.

Principles of Teaching and Learning

Having taken a course on Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works last summer, a lot of what I read in this article was already familiar to me. Since I teach third grade, I use a lot of the simpler strategies like Prior Knowledge in my teaching every day. My goal this year is to spend a lot more time using the more effective strategies like Similarities and Differences on a more regular basis. As I've been doing the readings through this masters program, and more specifically in this article on Principles of Teaching and Learning, one thing keeps jumping out at me: more often than not I do not take the time to explicitly explain the expectations for an assignment and show my students the rubric before I teach an activity. I'm very careful about explaining the task with step-by-step explicit directions, but I am definitely lacking on the expectations part. One example of this was when I was doing a writing assessment with my class a few years ago. I assigned the task, activated their prior knowledge, went over examples of things they could write about, and told them how much time they had to complete the task. However, I never showed them the rubric I was going to use to grade their writing, and therefore, they did not meet my expectations and did not do very well. When I was in college I was taught how to create rubrics and how to use them for grading, and I use them now more than I ever expected I would, but no one ever tells you to show the kids the rubric FIRST and explain it to them. It's always been more of a tool for me, and my students never saw it until they got it back with a grade attached to their assignment. How stupid of me! My second goal this year is to improve in this area and be very specific about what I want from my students on each and every assignment. I also have the advantage of having a SMARTBoard in my room, so it will be easy for me to pop the rubric up there for the whole class to see.

A Great Class Comes to an End

I can't believe it's the last week of our Internet Learning Resources class! Where has the time gone? I have learned SO MUCH in this four weeks, all of which I can use right away when school starts next week. This week wasn't as much about fun, as we covered a lot about internet safety and copyright laws. It really helped me clear up a lot of questions I had about copyright. I feel a lot more confident about what's safe to use and what's not when I do projects with my students this year. The internet safety information was SHOCKING to me! I've always been careful with kids and the internet, but I now feel like I need to be more careful myself, too. What a lot of knowledge I've gained!

Week 2 of Internet Learning Resources

This has been a very interesting week. I'm really enjoying the class, and all of the things I can take back to school and use right away! Noodle Tools is one of my new favorites. I could spend hours on that site! At first I wasn't sure if I'd really use Google Alerts or not, but I think I could definitely use it with my students when doing current events, or historical events. I was really happy with the Site Evaluation Tool assignment, after finishing it this week. I am so glad to finally have a tool to use with my students when teaching them about being careful with internet sites. Overall, it's been a pretty great week!

First Week of Internet Learning Resources

So far, I've really enjoyed the first week of this new class. I always love taking a class that will have things I can walk into my classroom and use tomorrow, and I feel this will be one of those classes. I found a lot of good websites that have very user-friendly lists of resources I can use with my third graders. I'm also enjoying creating an Internet Web Resource Site Evaluation Form for my students. We found and used a Software Evaluation Form in the CEdO 515 class we took a few weeks ago. However, I feel the Site Evaluation form for my kids will be even more useful. For my third graders, being as young as they are, they tend to believe everything they read on the internet. I will definitely use the Site Evaluation on a weekly basis in my class to help my students decipher between useful, credible sites, and sites they should not use.

InTime video

The video I watched this week was called Electing the President - Hyperstudio. It was a lesson for second and third graders that takes them through the entire election process from creating political parties, to choosing a candidate, making speeches, and finally to election. This information was very useful and definitely a lesson I plan to use with my third graders. I do a presidential unit each year, but I haven't incorporated much technology into it yet. The activity on these videos could be done every year, regardless if it's an election year or not. I think the Hyperstudio project will be an excellent way to teach the election process, because it gets the students more involved in the process than just watching a video or being lectured to about it.

Using Productivity Tools - Week One

Well, I survived the first week of our new class, and I must say I found many things we did this week very useful. First, I LOVED the graphics programs we tried out. I definitely plan to use this with my third graders, especially my reluctant writers. This will be a whole new outlet for them! Second, I also plan to use the presentation programs with my students. I teach them how to use Powerpoint every year, and this will make it so much easier to share their presentations.

The reading really made me re-think some of my teaching techniques. I always integrate a lot of technology into my teaching, especially since I got the SMARTBoard in my classroom. One thing that really jumped out at me was making sure technology use is relevant to the task. Sometimes I think I might overuse technology, mostly because I get so excited about it, but it might not always be the best way to teach a topic. I will definitely be more cautious about this in the future.

Course connections

The course I'm taking right now, Computers and How They Work, connects to me in a few different ways. First, I've always been very interested in technology. In my house, I'm definitely the administrator, and I have to be on top of things in order to keep our PC and laptop running smoothly with no interruptions. At work, I'm kind of a go-to person on staff. The things I've learned in this class will definitely help me do a better job in both of these roles. I've learned a lot about good computer maintenance, and things I would need to know when troubleshooting problems. I think all of the information I've acquired will be helpful to me in the future. Especially if I continue getting new technology assignments at work, or if I someday become that tech person who is responsible for making big tech decisions for the district. Either way, I have learned SO MUCH in six weeks, and I will never regret having taken this class.

Managing a computer

If there's one thing I have learned through managing my computer, it's that it is definitely a complicated task. I am the sole person managing my computer at home, because although my husband uses a computer daily, he is not up on the management part of it. I am the person who takes care of cleaning up the system, virus protection, troubleshooting, hardware and software, and data security and backup. It's kind of nice at school, because the tech person takes care of all of these things for me, so I can kind of take a break from my management role at work. However, it's a different story at home. In order to be an effective manager, I need to know what hardware and software I need and how to run it, how to defragment and clean disks when things get sluggish, what virus protection is best and how to use it, what to do if a virus is detected, how to fix common problems and where to go if I can't fix it, and how to backup our information so we don't lose everything in case of a system crash. All of it can be very overwhelming, and you really have to stay on top of it daily in order to be an effective manager with a smooth-running system.

How to be a better computer user

I think having an increased knowledge of hardware components will definitely make me a better computer user. This is especially true when it comes to troubleshooting. There have been several times during my adult life when I have had problems arise with my computer and I was without it for weeks or months while someone else tried to fix it. I am now convinced that a lot of time could have been saved if I had known a little more about what was going on with my hardware components. I didn't even have a clue about most of the terms the tech support guy was using when I talked to him, and I could have skipped at least two of his visits if I had known a little more about what was going on "under the hood" of my computer. I didn't feel comfortable opening the tower when I was asked to by the technician, much less knowing what I was looking at when I did open it. I feel like I will now be much more prepared if I have problems in the future.

Another way that increased knowledge of my hardware components makes me a better computer user is in my profession. I do a lot of technology projects with my students, and am always frustrated when something goes wrong, or when I can't figure out how to make something work with my project the way I want it to. The knowledge I gain from this class will definitely help me be a better teacher of technology, because I will know why things work the way they do, and therefore be of more assistance to my students on a daily basis.

Expanding my knowledge

I thought I really knew a lot about computers, until I started this class called "Computers and How They Work". Now I'm feeling a little overwhelmed and definitely humbled by the experience.

I guess I thought I knew a lot because I'm one of the people my colleagues come to with questions when our tech person is unavailable. I can usually help them, too. I've taken quite a few technology classes, I use a SMARTBoard in my room daily, I integrate technology into my curriculum with my third graders every day, and I've often had to trouble shoot my own personal computer. This has included taking the side off my tower while Dell has walked me through steps to try to fix my computer, to no avail.

I would like to expand my knowledge so that I can trouble shoot and fix my computer when things go wrong, without having to contact Dell tech support. It would be much more convenient, and time-saving, if I could do it myself. Although I've had my tower on my computer opened many times, I've really never done anything other than replace the memory. I didn't know what any of the other parts inside were called until I started the "Under the Hood" assignment. I guess that means I'm on the right track to try to reach my goal of knowing the insides of my computer as well as I know the outside.

Look how much I've learned!

Wow! I can't believe how much I've learned during the two weeks we've been doing this class! I'm looking over each thing and thinking, "Where have you been all my life?"! My favorite thing from this week that I think I will use in my classroom is Skype. When I was doing my video call with Louis this week, he gave me the greatest idea for my classroom! I plan to use my webcam and Skype to bring authors and other experts into my classroom. That way, the kids can interact with the expert, without spending the money for a field trip. Thanks for the great tip, Louis!

So far, everything I have learned, including Google Docs, Social Bookmarking, and Skype, will be very useful in my classroom. I've already told my colleagues in my grade level about Google Docs, which we plan to use soon. I've also set up a Social Bookmarking group for the elementary SMARTBoard users to share sites. Now I plan to use Skype for virtual field trips. This is all so exciting! I can't wait to try it at school!

My head is spinning...

Well, I'm into my second week of my first Master's class, and my head is spinning! I am so excited to be starting this wonderful journey, but at the same time I'm looking at the clock and thinking, "There aren't enough hours in the day!"

So far, we've learned about Nings, Blogs, and Web Browsers. I actually just joined my first Ning about three weeks ago, for a grant project I'm doing called Project TILT. It's all about integrating technology into the curriculum, and I had to join a Ning to collaborate with my group members from other school districts about our projects. So I had heard about Nings, but this is my very first time blogging. It's very exciting! As for the browsers, I've always used Internet Explorer at home, and sometimes Firefox at school, but that's about it. I didn't realize how many different choices there were until I started the homework for this week! I'm really looking forward to doing the compare/contrast and to try out some different options to see what I might like.

I'm very anxious to see how I can use each of these things in my everyday life, with colleagues and students. Since I teach third graders, I'm having a hard time getting past the "this will be way too difficult for them" thing. However, I can definitely see using a lot of things in my communications with colleagues. I'm looking at Google docs and wondering why we haven't been using this all along instead of creating a document, e-mailing it to 3 or 4 people and saying "feel free to make changes and e-mail it back to me." How convenient, simple, and efficient Google docs will be!

I am very excited to be starting this Masters Program. I have been wanting to do it for quite a while now, and when I saw an opportunity in Instructional Technology and all online, I knew I had found the perfect fit for me! I look forward to getting to collaborate with all of the great people I'm meeting in class also! Well, I'm spent.....good night!