Final Thoughts

To wrap up this semester, I have created a Voki, something I did not do for any other project for this course. While the number of applications, passwords and online accounts was overwhelming at times, learning how to use these tools was beneficial. I have taken this blog and used it to inspire a personal blog in the area of cooking. I enjoy using it to share my thoughts and recipes. While I do not have a classroom yet, using a blog personally is something that will later springboard into using one in a classroom. I have created a movie, recorded my voice as narration, I have an online resource library and an assortment of online tools that I will use to engage students in learning and assessments. I have appreciated the online community we have created, essentially a virtual network that will exist after the completion of this course.  It has certainly been a learning experience, even though I could not be converted to a Twitter user.

Literacy Project

I am mighty impressed with myself! I created a weebly website for fifth grade Literature Circles as well as a blog on the site to respond to assignments and collaborate.

The site has information on each book the students can choose, information on the jobs they will fill as members of each group and tasks to be completed for each week in their group. They will post their responses, questions, and a final review of their books as individuals. It was far easier than I expected and I loved the fact that you can have a blog and website in one place, this was by far the best feature! I was disappointed to find that to use some of the cooler tools, you have to pay. But I guess this is the case for most fun sites these days. The blog took me a few to figure out, but I was already able to post. While I don't have a class, I feel that this would be elementary level friendly and easy to use at home or in school for students!
Check out My Weebly for Literature Circles!!

Technology Focus

I found myself in an interesting technology situation yesterday. Throughout my Grad School career, I have taken enough courses to have a "focus in technology" along with my initial focus in Reading and Language Arts. When speaking to my adviser, I was told that I could only have one focus. Now to me that just seems wrong, seeing as I have taken the courses to satisfy both focus areas...but that is not the point. I was faced with deciding which path to take....technology, which is beginning to be a huge part in the classrooms or reading and language arts, which has always been buzz-word worthy.

Googleimages

googleimages

To stick with traditional or stretch for what is coming.. In the end, I opted to stick with my original Reading and Language Arts Focus. My reasoning for this was that technology is a constantly changing area. I could specialize in it now and it may or may not get me a job. But in 10 years, would it be as beneficial to be as R&LA in a job interview? Would what I learned still be relevant or would                                                  my degree be outdated?   I'm sure we will not just be blogging and skyping as we are  now. Why I can't have both I don't know, but in the face of making a decision, I felt that technology wasn't in my best interest long term.
                                                                 Thoughts anyone?

Skype...it's a whole new world

Here I was, thinking that I was pretty tech savvy. I mean I had dial up internet when I was in middle school and I was IMing with the best of them in high school. I got my first cell phone when I got my drivers license and it had no texting or camera functions. I felt the frustration with my parents for not having a clue about creating email addresses or facebook. The past few months of educational technology revelations have left me feeling old and I suppose much the way my parents felt when they had to ask "what is myspace"? When skyping...yes skyping the other night with high school seniors enrolled in an online girls school, I was left amazed with not only their literary abilities, but their ease and comfort with technology.There they were on the screen conversing with a room full of teachers or soon to be teachers as if they did it everyday. I found myself shoving myself out of my comfort zone just to ask them a question. Even though I question students every day, I found this hard. To think that students in high school are feeling that this technology is second nature is amazing to me. They skype and blog and have twitter accounts and google-docs and wikispaces and use them well. I have these things now and still don't use them well. These students were connecting with people worldwide on political issues! When I was a senior in high school I think I was pretty proud of myself when I figured out PowerPoint! I was also impressed with their answer to a question about elementary students and technology. They did not respond the way I thought they would, instead they pointed out that many of these technologies might be too advanced for kids in the k-5 level and should focus of different types of learning strategies. My fear has always been how much is too much? I often wonder how many more advances we can make before we are "plugged in" completely and it was nice to hear teenagers speaking to balance. While I am not yet comfortable with skype and while I could probably enjoy it with friends, it will take some getting used to if I want to connect with people I am not familiar with.

The Journey of a Digital Story

Well, the time has come to post my final version of this digital story. A few months ago I had no idea what anyone was talking about when they said narrate a digital story. Sure, I had made movies for fun to music, but my voice to a movie? This was new to me and it seemed that NASA level technology would need to be figured out to accomplish this.I never would have imagined that narrating this would be the easy part, only 20 minutes or so of sitting at the kitchen table with my laptop and microphone. It only took me 5 tries to get my timing down. And I remembered the wise words of my professor, saying save each attempt because it might be better than the next 5. I opted not to include music with the voice because it might be distracting. The timeline was helpful, especially when picking my purpose and getting my thoughts together in terms of the narration. How do the slides relate to my topic? To the next frame? I used the provided 
Storyboard googledoc  

to lay out my project. It was an interesting project that proved to be challenging but also a great learning experience. Here is my final version: An introduction to me!

My Video

This video is a project for my technology class. Because I do not have a classroom of my own yet, I decided to make an introductory video for my future students. Teachers always give their speech about who they are and what they like to do. I did mine using Movie Maker on my laptop. The only tricky part was the narration, and the only part of that which was difficult was finding a microphone. It took me 6 or 8 tries to nail the narration, but I think I am happy with it. My only question was whether or not to add music as well. This was not difficult to do overall, and I would use it in future classroom applications.

Snowball Effect

I would like to credit this class with my current addiction to blogging. I have recently started a food blog and I am so motivated and inspired to keep up with it and make it engaging and interesting for others. While I do not share this enthusiasm with my grad school blog, probably because I do not yet have a classroom, I can see how I could become very engaged in it should a classroom find me next year. I also love that I could have students contributing to the blog. Now that I am balancing two blogs at once, new questions have arisen... I have to have the same "About me" info on both blogs because they are linked through the same email address..does anyone know if this can be changed? I have also spent more time looking for different layouts and gadgets, a task that, for my first blog consisted of " well that will do" for my background and picking assigned gadgets. Having the freedom to run my own blog about my passion has been the best way for me to use what I have learned in this class and expand my knowledge and experience base.

Interesting Thoughts

I was reading a blog by a peer who was discussing the use of cell phone text messages to students... The program Remind101 lets teachers remind students of assignments etc via cell phones.This issue caught my attention... Rubi's Blog made good points when questioning this program that I agree with. She questions whether parents would be on board, I'm sure some would be fine with this, but I don't think 100% of parents would be on board. I also don't think that ALL students have cell phones, and it is hard to implement a new program without a technology being fully accessible. Of course this is hard to believe since my k-5 students have better phones that I do.. My main concern is if we as teachers are giving our phone numbers to students. We can have seperate social networking sites for work and friends but we don't usually have seperate phone numbers. Since this technology, at least in my mind is more geared for middle to high school students, my concern is about protecting the teacher. If students have a phone number, who is to say they won't begin texting to ask what you are doing over the summer, what movie you are seeing...why you are out sick and they have a sub (I have seen this text sent in the middle of a school day to a teacher...why they are on the phone I do not know). With so many teacher-student stories in the news, I don't think this move would be appropriate UNLESS the program hid your number. Even though, I don't particularly care for this idea, I am sure teachers are doing this and it is working, and that this is the direction education and technology are going.

Diigo

With all of the new technologies we have been exploring, I must admit that Diigo is the one that I use the least. While I appreciate the usefulness of this online tool, I have to remind myself to go on and find websites to add. I can fully understand how I might use this when I am looking for teaching tools when I have a classroom, but as of now, the other technologies are more interesting and useful at the present time. What I do like about  Diigo is the ability to share Diigo libraries with peers. I could see this being useful for grade level teams who are collaborating on units of study. I do not think I am using this tool to it's potential...I know that we can highlight and use post its...This is what interests me and I intend to play around with this to see other ways to use this online tool in ways other than a list of resources. There are several introductory videos on Diigo... I liked this one that is directed at teachers and explains ways to use Diigo as a teacher...

 

Using this tool when researching with students is another way to use Diigo. A group can be created where a classroom of students can share their research sites and ideas and can also be monitored by the teacher. Another way to assess student research projects! I have been slow to start My Diigo, but I am starting to play around with it and am starting to come around to its handiness!

Engaging Learning through Technology

I was thinking back to technologies I have used in past classrooms that I would like to bring into my future classroom. The one that really stuck out to me was a clicker based response program. The Turning Point program was obtained through a grant and was shared by the three grade two classrooms. I used this program as a pre assessment and post assessment of my unit of study. The assessment took on a Jeopardy like feeling, with each student having a hand held clicker. When I went to the next slide (like a powerpoint presentation) Students were presented with a question and multiple choice answers. They hit the corresponding button on their clicker. The program shows which clickers have not responded yet, letting you give sufficient wait time. After all answers are locked in, the correct answer is shown and the number of students who clicked in each answer. The results during the test did not point out specific student answers, which I liked. This takes away anxiety of students who may be sensitive if they do not have the correct answer. Of course when I review the scores after the fact, I see each student's answer. Like Survey Monkey, I like this program due to the fact that it takes the grading aspect off of my list of things to do. It is certainly a program I would be willing to write a grant for..

Survey Discovery

I just discovered Survey Monkey and I am so excited to have a tool that is easier to send out and compile data than the old paper survey that you send home in Friday Folders and cross your fingers that it makes its way back to you.  I am taking Action Research, a course that requires data collection. Now mind you, I am NOT a "data person". I don't like coding or numbers or really trying to find the time to squeeze in another project for grad school. I hit a snag in my project, and not just a little one...my project site backed out at the last minute. I had all of the surveys printed and ready to go for a district that did not have all students online at home. As I scrambled to find a new location, I reached out to my mentor...the teacher who taught me everything I know when I was her student teacher. She suggested (since all of her students have internet at home) that I try survey monkey, as I would have a better response. I pasted all of my questions onto this survey site, which took some doing since you can only have 10 questions on the free version and I had to get creative.

I am so excited that this tool will take so much work off my plate for this project! Not only will it be sent out as a link and posted on the classroom blog...parents will respond and I will get immediate feedback, no students losing the paper in the black hole that is their backpack... AND, the best part is the site will analyze and compile your data for you. Can they please invent something like this for grading papers and scoring writing prompts??

Skype Session 2

I must admit that I am getting hooked on the ideas of skyping both for myself in terms of connecting with far flung family members and a brother in the Service, but also as a teacher. While I still don't have my own classroom after 2 years searching...I have gained so many ideas of how this classroom technology can be used! Lisa posted a video from the classroom of Ms. Dunsinger which I was blown away by. Lisa's Blog  With students going back to their neighborhood schools, teachers are incorporating a multitude of learners, with and without disabilities into their classrooms. Having worked with children and teens with Autism, making a video to introduce them to the space they will be coming to seems like such a no brainer, yet I have never seen it done, nor thought to do it myself!  This use of technology is even easier with small devices such as flip cams, with these, we can record the daily happenings in our classrooms, even students can be incorporated in this recording process.
Ms Dunsinger's blog is motivating for beginning teachers, like myself. I especially like the story telling aspect that was recently posted. This can give students the chance to post their stories online, collaborate and expand stories and allow parents to view what their student is working on in school. I always thought that creating a blog, wiki space etc would be one more thing I would have to keep up after school hours.
Our skype session with Ms Dunsinger and her students opened my eyes to the fact that we can allow students to take the lead on this classroom technology. This session also let me see how useful Skype can be when teaching classrooms to be "global learners". We can easily collaborate with students in different countries ( as we just did), different states or towns. We can compete, collaborate and learn from one another in a way that was not an option when I was a student.

My Animoto Video

My Animoto Video

My First Animoto

Well I must say, after I stared at the screen for some time trying to figure out what to use as my first Animoto topic it was the most basic idea that took flight for this project. When I was student teaching, I introduced Robust Vocabulary to my second graders. I used PowerPoint to make a type of game show...but what if I just wanted to introduce the words to them, or give them a quick preview that would put an image in their heads?  Without a classroom of my own now, it is hard to pick a topic that I will use in the future, and I no longer have permission from past students to post their pictures online so I opted to introduce the robust vocabulary words in a new way. 

Here is a link to my first Animoto!
http://animoto.com/play/A3Re0ePEE1dcVN5N5TaWdw

This was not at all a difficult project and I can see myself using it for the classroom as well as just for fun on my own. The ability to upload was great as you could do so not only from your documents but from any online programs you keep. The music selection was also helpful, although with the free version, I'm sure it was a limited collection. The same goes for the themes. I wish there had been a greater number of themes or preloaded images to pick from. This is easy enough to have students using independently to create a great visual for any project, book report or center activity!

Digital Storytelling

As I am sitting here on a sick day, suffering through the school system's illness of the week, I have been considering how to best use digital storytelling in a classroom. When I was student teaching in a grade 2 classroom, my students were working on Reptile and Amphibian Reports during writers workshop. The fisihed product was a class book and the idea to make them into a digital story. By the time I left in December, this had not been done. Too many other things had gotten in the way such as testing and other curriculum goals that needed to be met. I wonder for those who struggled with the writing process, if the end result was a "movie book" if this would have motivated them more. And how great it would be for children whose parents are divoced to be able to bring home 2 DVD copies of the class book to share with both parents? While not on Amphibians or Reptiles, I found a short story on Spiders that would be a great example if each student just wanted to record their report rather than a whole class report.

From YouTube

Digital storytelling in the classroom would be a great motivator for students to publish their work in a way that is relevant to their world. It is also a great way to introduce new content, set up prior knowledge and hook students into a lesson. With technology being such a huge part of students lives today, we can't keep it out of the classrooms. When we ask parents what motivates their child and they say videogames, we can't just sigh and ask if there is anything else...If technology motivates them use it!

A Whole New World of Classrooms

Reading Articles about how classrooms CAN change are exciting and often trigger that passion for teaching that I felt the day I got my certification in the mail. There are countless possibilities when teachers add technology to the classrooms, even more when we add that technology component to the homes where are students reside. To bring the classroom into the homes of students has 2 sides, as a teacher, I realize there may be a decreased need when it comes to teacher employment or that the role of teacher will drastically change. The other aspect is the ability to create a global classroom some day down the road. Students could be taking courses and collaborating with students across the road or across the world. What an amazing opportunity to learn about the world than to share your learning experiences with a variety of cultures? Or what could we do if there was an epidemic..H1N1 anyone? Could instruction still happen from living-rooms across the town?
There are so many directions we could go, and are beginning to go including digital texts. The explosion of the Kindle and Nook devices were evident this past holiday season, as everyone I know, including myself got an e-reader of some variety. What shocked me was that I could not find a single required text available on my Kindle! How great would college be if I could use my handy e-reader to highlight and take notes that were all contained to my one device? Thinking of these devices in elementary or high school classes has me considering the tablets that include internet, students could research, blog, view media and read their texts on a device that can go from home to school and year to year. What baffles me is the fact that we have the technology and are not using it to it's greatest potential in our classrooms.

Tech Savvy Classrooms? Or Not Yet?

After reading the first few chapters of Empowering Students with technology, I felt like someone actually "got it". November touched on the struggles, frustrations and amazing moments that can be brought about by technology in the classroom. As teachers, we did not necessarily have computer instruction throughout our school career. I personally remember typing class once or twice a week where we learned where our fingers should go and our words per minute report at the end of the year. I did not need to know the difference between .com and .org or understand the credibility of a web site...web site? What is a web site? I remember dial up and not being able to sneak online at night because of the obnoxious sound pattern that would wake the dead. And I'm only 26, part of the "new generation" of teachers that are bringing technology into the classrooms. But even as the new teacher, I didn't grow up with what these students are familiar with. This raises an issue of students being more in touch with making a website than their teacher which was pointed out by November. When my smartboard malfunctions I turn to my students rather than the teacher next door. This new generation brings new challenges, we as teachers need to teach students how to understand the internet, to weed out the accurate information from the information posted by Joe Shmoe. Critical thinking needs to include online information. When I saw the site www.archive.org described in the text, I made a huge star in my book which I hate to do! You can look up the history of a site? You can see the progression of information that you thought was lost in the vastness of the internet black hole? This is great!
As teachers, we face the new issue of how to balance the need to teach and utilize technology and the district policies. Of course it would be amazing to have a classroom blog, a class website and assignments that require online research or presentations, but we are not there on a unanimous level. If we are going to expect students to enter a world where they MUST understand the internet and connect with people through social networking sites, we need to start when they are young so that it is natural for them. In a world where the internet is the number one technology for children, it amazes me how little is is used in classrooms and how many schools have no technology--not even a smartboard.

It makes so much sense to use what we have available to provide students with more authentic learning, why not skype with experts in the field in which your class is studying? A class in China when studying China in grade two, or Mexico in Kindergarten. Why can't students watch a web cam of a live fiesta?

Google Images

These experiences are things we can do now! I am baffled that technology is not being pushed harder, especially after attening the I Citizen event and reading modern readings on the issues.  The following video depicts two classes, one being in Hawaii utilizing skype as a technological "pen pal" program.

As a last note, how much sense would it make to offer video conferencing to parents that struggle to make it into the school? Or if a student is sick, to be able to send them homework or even a virtual lesson to watch at home? There is so much potential in technology that we as teachers are not utilizing yet. The town hall meeting pointed out that we should see leaps in the next ten years, but in the next ten years imagine how much technology will evolve!

I-Citizen: A panal discussion

Google Images

After sitting through the "town hall" style panel discussion on what it means to be an "I Citizen" and how this fits into our classrooms I left with some interesting thoughts to ponder. While the panel was diverse, I was suprised there were no classroom teachers. Aren't these professionals the ones that will be initializing these new technology based ideas? While I liked the live skype with a high school classroom, their definition of an "I Citizen" was vastly different from the conversations going on with the panel. I was more interested in the TN classrooms communication with a freshman seminar. That being said, I can appreciate the panel member who had been involved in this program and would have enjoyed hearing more about this process. The second panel member who I would have liked to hear more from was Nick. He had some very interesting points that were backed up by personal experience. He was by far the most passionate panel member and I don't feel like he was given enough time to speak, nor were several of his points discussed after his turn was up. Grossman and JoAnn were by far the "stars" of the show, fielding the majority of questions but not really addressing what I thought the discussion was to be about. Yes use technology in the classrooms, but be careful to make sure you accomodate the BOE guidelines...yes we all know that! Budgets and policy were mentioned but they did not discuss how teachers are using technology or where they think it is going in the future.

 Jordan made a good point that this "online communication" is a life or death issue after the school shootings. I agree that bullying is easier done online when a face is not attached to a comment. We do need to stop this by instilling a strong moral compass in our students and that needs to start at home. There needs to be a zero tolerance approach when it comes to negative school climates and we need to realize that school climate is created out of the school walls as well. It is created on facebook, through emails and other networking sites online.
Overall, I felt that the meeting, while well intentioned was scattered and lacked focus and equality surrounding the panalists responses.

Digital Storytelling

 

http://karinebaghdasaryan.edublogs.org/



Digital Story Telling was first introduced to me at the end of my student teaching experience. My cooperating teacher was the most technologically savvy teacher in the building and thus passed on bits and pieces of this know how to me. Throughout my time there, students had been working on recording their Reptile Reports and syncing their voices with illustrations. What better way to make writers workshop meaningful? The students were writing for a purpose, and to them, this was better than being "published" in the traditional sense where their work is laminated and compiles into one classroom book. At the end of my time there, the class made me a digital story, with photographs of each child, accompanied by there voices giving a farewell message. These final products can be put on disk and copied for each child.

I loved the following youtube video depicting the process in a third grade classroon. The teacher narrates the "how to" video with pictures of her students and explains her process in terms that are very understandbale.



I have also been playing around with animoto and inserting my own pictures from trips or events. I have done this before in MovieMaker and played music along with the "movie" as I saw you could do in Animoto, but I am still wondering how I am going to record a voice without the use of a microphone. Students without these tools in their classroom would still be able to see their movie but I feel it would decrease the overall experience if their voices were not a part of the project.

 

Viewing the World from your Classrooms

There are so many resources out there for teachers, students and parents that will offer more authentic experiences in the classrooms and at home. While I do not yet have my own classroom, as a substitute,  I get to experience a multitude of teaching techniques every week. What has surprised me is the lack of technology use. Looking at these resources, I would love to use the EarthCam tool and let my students see different areas of the planet streaming live into the classroom. It would be amazing to have students travel to the African Safari and see streaming footage of a watering hole all day while they work! This also allows you to view local cameras to check weather, traffic and historical places, a tool I would use when studying weather or use in a morning meeting.
What I also found amazing was that there is sound accompanying the webcams. I specifically like one of the African Web Cams, watching it at night also allows you to HEAR the activity even if no animals are in sight, you can hear crickets and frogs etc...maybe some birds or monkeys in there too.

http://www.mysound.uconn.edu/

Because I am intrigued by the idea of real time viewing experiences, I saw the Long Island Sound Web Cam and remembered my numerous field trips to the sound throughout the years. To prepare these trips, how amazing would it have been to prepare for this trip by checking in daily and gaining an understanding of tides, conditions, sights and sounds of the Sound? You gain prior knowledge that you can take on the trip as a class and make this an even more meaningful trip where students can delve deeper into the content because they already know the basics. I find that I am drawn to these types of web sources, although I love the content based sites as well, these experiences offer an opportunity to view sites that they may never see in person.

Exploring the Technologies:
After exploring the numerous sites and blogs surrounding Digital Story telling and Animotos, I can see the value of using these tools in the classroom. With computer based skills being a constantly growing need that must be addressed in classrooms, teachers must adjust to these demands. What I like about Digital Story Telling is that you can still use students authentic and non computer based work and embed it into a technology based program. Students can combine computer based and non computer based tasks and skills into a final product. Not only do these tools allow students to learn the technologies but they can be used as teaching tools by the teacher to deliver information. A slide show of historic documents, habitats or new countries beings in the aspect of multiple intelligences and learning styles. Visuals are a must. If you can incorporate sounds, narration or music that is bringing in a whole new learning aspect. These online How To resources are a valuable addition to a teachers toolbox.

Technology and Literacy Readings: Changing Times

This week’s readings focused on the change in classrooms based on the increase in technology. In the article Expanding the New Literacy’s Conversation they make the point that “The most profound influence on life in the 20^th century may turn out to be the internet”. I agree that the internet itself, as a huge resource of information has changed the ability of people to access articles, opinions etc. What has changed even more in the past 15 or twenty years is the accessibility of students to this resource. Many homes have computers and the internet, classrooms usually have one or more computers and now, cell phones contain this technology for you to use on the go. What I fear we don’t consider is those homes that do not have the interne, or the schools that lack funding. I do not believe we are to the point yet where we can assume students have access to the internet and therefore make online work a requirement out of school. This concern is shared in the reading, stating, “Thus students in the poorest schools become doubly disadvantaged: They have less access to the Internet at home, and schools do not always prepare them for the new literacies of online reading comprehension at school”

This article, as well as C’s of Change Intervene point out that when incorporating such a huge part of youth culture into the classrooms new policies will accompany the new technologies.  It is not far-fetched to assume that new policies are in the future for teachers, with the restructuring of the education standards, standards looking at technology will make their way into classrooms. The article points out that “New policies for teachers that include an internet aspect and integration and communication”.  Teachers may be required to communicate online with students through blogs or digital submissions; they may have to meet requirements for amount of work being done online in the classroom and balance written work with digital work on projects, class work and homework.

I found it interesting that this week’s reading pointed out that “No state writing assessment in the United States measures students’ ability to compose effective e-mail messages”. For technology to be playing such a large part in society, educators need to grow to incorporate modern issues such as email, social networking and data searches. We  are still asking students to perform tasks that will not be as useful to their future as if we asked them to use the internet. The article supports this concern, stating “First and foremost, the Internet must become a dominant instructional text within today's classroom. Students cannot build 21st Century Literacies in classrooms that revolve around textbooks”.

Chapter one was not what I expected from a college text assignment. It was full of resources and ideas that can be implemented immediately. The example based on content areas was impressive.  I especially liked the Social Studies section, where you are given  the American Memory information to access historical documents. Using technology in the classroom is great and teachers are always looking for interesting websites. This first chapter was a wealth of specific information and links. It was greatly appreciated

From the standards. I was impressed with the expanse of areas covered. I appreciate the changing of the times and the fact that we need to use technology to not only hook students, but also to prepare them for the increase of technology use in the future. Teaching students to be creative using a computer program is vital for high school, college and the work place. The same goes for using technology to research. Students are more likely to use internet resources to research a topic, not to mention the overwhelming wealth of information available without leaving your desk. The growth of technology use in the classroom and at home, for academic purposes or recreational enjoyment is something that will only grow in the future. I found the standards as well as the resources from chapter one informative and able to lay an understandable foundation for implementing these technologies in the classroom.