Chapter 10 Log

Thinking back on my favorite experiences when I was in school, I immediately remember the newscast we had to video tape lampooning Romeo and Juliet; the video parody of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead; and the book-on-tape we had to create for the short story we wrote. Looking back now, I realize that these were all alternative assessments supported by technology. Use and the scope of technology has increased tremendously in the five years that I've been out of school. Now it is so simply to create a quiz or survey on Google Docs that multiple groups have used it in their chapter presentations. Everyone in our class is required to maintain a blog, which is a great form of assessment with technology.

I like the idea of electronic portfolios. I have always been partial to portfolios as opposed to tests and many other forms of assessment; portfolios can help both the teacher and the learner see growth over a period of time. E-portfolios, as the book describes them, can be used for a wide range of things, giving the teacher flexibility. Traditional portofolios typically consist of whatever work has been done throughout the semester, which is almost always paper-based. E-portfolios can contain a variety of media, from text documents to spreadsheets to video and audio files. I can't imagine the fun I'm going to have as a teacher having my students compile e-portfolios! I plan to teach middle school social studies, and I could see an e-portfolio containing a newscast about a certain time period, a properly-maintained and historically accurate Twitter account of an historic figure, and a spreadsheet showing data (such as population or voting records) from a particular time period.

I never had any idea there were websites to help build a rubric. I tried to go to Rubric Builder, but the website is down and redirects you to a different site, where a new version of Rubric Builder is located. I was very impressed with the ease of use that Rubric Builder brings to the table. There is simply a keyword box to use to search for rubrics! I also discovered the Landmark Project, which hosts Rubric Builder. I found so many awesome tools on that website. Rubrics.com is no longer in use.

As I mentioned before, Google Docs is a geat way to assess with computer-based tests and surveys. I've used SurveyMonkey before and never really liked it much; I always thought it should be presented better. I think that right now, Google Docs blows all these survey and test services listed in the book out of the water.

Chapter 9 Log

I had never heard of GIS until I read this chapter. To be honest, even after the reading, I am a little unclear on what exactly it is and how it works. I looked at the ESRI site, but it did little to help explain GIS in depth. I was unclear on the relationship between Google Maps, SketchUp, and GIS - are those Google products based on GIS? Those two paragraphs do not discuss GIS, only maps in general. As I am familiar with Google Maps, this is a relationship I hope to get cleared up in the chapter presentation on Wednesday morning.

I appreciate the inclusion of graphing calculators in this chapter. Although we were always told we needed a graphing calculator in high school, most of the time we were not allowed to use them on tests, because of the ability to program them to carry out functions. I taught myself how to create a program for an equation so that I could simply input values and the calculator would do the math for me. I always thought that it would have been more useful to learn how to program the calculators than disallowing us from using them at all. After all, in order to properly program the calculator one must know what the equation is and how it works. It can get complicated when you assign variables to parts of equations and then have to tell the calculator to carry out the equation with the new variables that have just been assigned. It sure helped me understand the intricacies of the actual mathematical process better, as opposed to just plugging in numbers. Basically, I ended up carrying out what I was trying to avoid.

I think having students use digital cameras and camcorders to make videos, take pictures, and edit these media is an excellent idea. We are seeing one use of this technology in working with our stop-motion animation project in class. We also had our booktalk, which was a form of digital storytelling. Also, it's worth noting here that I received a comment on my YouTube version of my digital booktalk the other day, from someone I didn't know, who stated that his English teacher had shown their class MY booktalk! I was so excited!

Chapter 8 Log

When I was much younger, my parents were thinking about doing some remodeling in our house. We went to the office of an architect and met with an interior designer who used a CAD program to show us some ideas he had. It was at that moment I knew I was interested in architecture and would be an architect who worked with CAD programs. Of course, things change and that never worked out. But just seeing someone use that CAD program got me interested - at least for a while - in something I never would have been otherwise exposed to. Using programs like SketchUp or Pro/DESKTOP incorporate the core subjects like science and math, and help a student by increasing his or her spatial reasoning skills. But they also can help turn a student onto a new hobby, interest, or even career path. Too often in schools we push nothing but the core subjects, leaving students with a lack of hobbies or extracurricular interests. Programs like these can help foster a new interest while also addressing academic points.

Similarly, programs like Scratch can help develop a student's interest in programming. Years ago, I used to love programming. Over the summer after 4th grade I took a robotics class in which we programmed sequences for robots to act out. I taught myself HTML and built websites with raw HTML. But with the advent of WYSIWYG editors and once school cut into my extracurricular time, I no longer had the time to learn the new languages or keep up with anything programming-related. Just from the simple Scratch projects we've been doing in class, I have remembered how much I loved programming.

I checked out the iStopMotion site, as I had never heard of it. The producers of the site understand that their product is very useful for education, and as such they include a list of curriculum ideas for their product. Sadly, the product is not free, so I had to rely on examples to see what it was capable of.

In the past, I have designed music with programs such as Finale Notepad and Sibelius Music, neither of which are listed here. Musical background is required for both, however. I thought that the Musical Sketch Pad was a really cool lsite that could be used with most any grade level and any level of musical ability. I'm glad that tools like this exist in order to get kids interested in and thinking about music at a young age. Budget cuts often take away from music programs, so any help is tremendous.

Chapter 7 Log

Communicating comprises a vast majority of what I do personally with most of the technology I use. I feel connected, and as such I have a hard time separating from my phone or laptop when I'm in class or at a meeting or with friends. This chapter covers a lot of the different things that I do with technology as a way of communicating.

The book first discusses discussion boards. I use several online forums - I even run one. I use them for my two biggest passions: sports and politics. The forum I run is a Florida Marlins discussion board. The beauty of using this forum is that it connects many people with similar passions but different ideas and provides a way for these ideas to be communicated. The book mentions that discussion boards are asynchronous; however, this is not always the case. On our forum we added a feature called "Live Topic." Live Topic automatically refreshes the thread you are reading whenever a new post is made, essentially making it synchronous, almost like a chat room. This comes in handy for our purpose when we are discussing the real-time events of a baseball game. I think that forums could be used for its strengths in education. Employing a forum in my classroom, for instance, would allow those people who are too shy to speak in class to share their thoughts. Additionally, it could allow those people who need time to gather their thoughts to formulate what they want to say, then type it and have the ability to edit it. It can also allow everyone to see everyone else's ideas, which in turn could trigger some new ideas in some students. Like the book mentions, online forums could be good for second-language learners, as it provides time to think about what will be said and doesn't require them to speak aloud.

I am always connected to AOL Instant Messenger, Google Chat, and Facebook Chat. For me, it makes communication much easier because I can double-check what I write and think it over before I say it. I use chat rooms less frequently, but do it as a matter of convenience when I need to talk to multiple people about the same subject. My most frequent use of chat rooms is for drafts in my fantasy sports leagues. As an educator, I could set up a chat room with chat hours once or twice a week. This would allow students who may be too shy or nervous to talk to me face to face a place where they could think about what they are going to say and not me embarrassed to ask anything.

As I said in class one week, I also have experience with internet radio and podcasts. I used to run an internet radio politics show with my best friend. The show would then be archived and turned into a podcast. I loved doing this, as it would connect me to people I'd never met who just found our show. Using student-generated podcasts in the classroom would be a lot of fun and extremely engaging. Students could be broken apart into groups in order to produce podcasts about certain topics in order to share them with the class. Making the podcasts available for everyone to download would provide an easy study tool for students. Creating the podcast would help those students who are shy in front of the class to participate, and because nothing would have to be "presented" in front of the class, creating a podcast would allow students to focus more on the facts and information as opposed to the delivery of the information.

Chapter 6 Log

I'm very interested in Web 2.0 technologies and how they can affect education, so I was immediately drawn into this chapter when these technologies were introduced on the second page.

I had never heard of Knowledge Forum, so I set off to check it out. (Interesting note: going to knowledgeforum.com redirects you to motion.com, the parent company of Knowledge Forum; one must use a www. in front of the URL to access the Knowledge Forum site directly.) The site allows for a demo using the Java platform in order for a user to see what the product is like. Although I found it to be a bit confusing, this may be because the demo does not have the ful functionality that the full version has. It seemed to me to almost combine a wiki and a concept map and a forum. Given that I thought it was a bit confusing, however, it's probably not something I'd use in my classroom.

Wikis, however, definitely are something I would use. It is easy to see the benefit of wikis in education just by looking at the wikis we use in our own classroom. I think wikis are a good way to get kids to work together and to realize that the internet enables them to connect to people who have valuable information on whatever topic they are interested in. Using wikis in the classroom can also provide the right environment to discuss why wikis are not always the most reliable source available on the internet. I would integrate wikis as much as possible, letting students use them for projects and using them for class assignments and other classwide information. I really want to teach secondary history at some point, and I think that wikis would integrate particularly well with history, such as Dan McDowell's Holocaust wiki. For example, a class could have a wiki with different pages for founding fathers.

My inquiry question is about how blogs could be used to further education, so I really enjoyed the section on blogs in the chapter. I don't want to discuss much of it here, since I want to save it for the inquiry assignment. However, one idea I had for my future class, tying into history, would be for students to have a blog as a historical figure of whatever period we are discussing. Students would need to make chronological and historically accurate posts in their blogs. I have also found several blogs specifically for teachers with lesson plans, tips, and research for teachers and by teachers.

The bottom line is that there is a ton of information on the internet and students and teachers should use as much of this information as possible, assuming it is reliable. Gaining access to this information can be very valuable and can increase learning and networking abilities.

Chapter 5 Log

This chapter of the book is very timely. In our science class on Wednesday, we are turning in a paper about models and how they can be used to teach. It's amazing how our classes line up at times!

As I mentioned in my last blog post, I was turned onto the idea of concept maps at a very early age because my parents are both teachers. For years I used a standard concept map, but started making my own when I got to high school. I think that concept maps really helped me to understand what I was learning and to synthesize the information, and I think being able to use online concept maps like Semantica and Inspiration or Kidspiration is a great privilege that I wish I had when I was in school. I am really going to encourage my future students to concept map whenever possible. If I have an IWB I'd love to do a class concept map at the end of each topic.

Spreadsheets are another powerful tool, and is something I think isn't used as often as it should be. I didn't even learn how to work and manipulate Excel until I took EME2040 here in my sophomore year. Once I did, I found out how valuable spreadsheets can be for calculations and organizing information. I started doing many calculations in spreadsheets after I learned how to do this, and I began to use spreadsheets whenever I needed to make graphs. (As a note and a tie-in to current events, I just read an article today that Google Docs has now updated their word document software to include equations, something that other word processors don't have. Perhaps this will make students realize how valuable having equation computation at their fingertips can be.) In my own classroom in the future, I'd like to encourage students to use spreadsheets in math and science problems, as well as any time a graph needed to be made for history or any other topic.

I had never heard of nor had any experience with expert systems. It seems very interesting and something I would love to program and play around with. I did a quick search of Google but didn't find anything that would allow me to quickly program something, so I'll have to look deeper in the future. edit: After the class presentation, I realize that I do have some experience with expert systems but never really knew what they were.

Chapter 4 Log

I really connected with this chapter of the text. With both my parents being teachers, they introduced me to mind maps and concept maps at a very young age. My mom had hundreds of photocopies of a pre-made concept map that I used to fill out while I was studying my materials. When I got to high school, I stopped using the pre-made ones, as I needed more complex connections than the photocopy had, and I started making my own. I know first hand how helpful putting information into this format can be, and I am so jealous that I didn't have the opportunity to use online concept mapping tools (or that I did have the opportunity and didn't know these sites existed). The logistics of having all students use this online technology while in the classroom is near impossible, but it is definitely something I could suggest or require to be done at home. For history lessons, for example, I could require each student have a concept map by the end of the unit, and provide the URLs for Semantica and Kidspiration. If I am lucky enough to have an IWB, I can use one of these services in the class, with all kids in the class contributing to the "community concept map."

I was very excited to read about Kidscribe in the book. The idea seemed really cool, but then I went to the website and it was an ad-filled placeholder. A quick Google search solved the problem though, as the site is alive and well at http://brightinvisiblegreen.com/kidscribe/, although it seems like it is no longer updated. If I'm wrong about this, then it could be a great site to use in many ways. I would use it with any English Language Learners I had in the class. It would be a great place for the student to see examples of "everyday" English use and could provide a way for him or her to practice on writing things in English.

The book suggests using Writely, which is now, of course, Google Docs (although I remember getting a long-awaited invite to Writely from Google, then getting my own invite and selling it on eBay!). I would incorporate this into my class as best as I could, most likely with respect to groupwork. Kids are always complaining that they can't get together with group members or they can't work out times to meet. Google Docs solves that. All the kids have to do is share a document between them and they can edit it whenever is convenient for them. Google Docs could also be used for class-wide projects, such as a class-edited story in which everyone contributes a paragraph each week, or a class-wide log of what's been going on in class so that everyone can access it from home.