Well Ed-Tech Blog, it's been a good learning experience. Thanks for everything Barry!
Task Stream Document
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Monday, September 27, 2010
OTEN Conference Report
Here is my Yodio podcast about this weekend's OTEN conference. I discuss the keynote speaker, Mr. Tim Lauer, as well as the two showcase sessions I attended with Mr. Jason Niedermeyer and Ms. Suzette Lewis.
The Yodio was ridiculously easy to make. I think anyone could do it.
The Yodio was ridiculously easy to make. I think anyone could do it.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Educational Technology Standards
After reviewing the various standards for education in technology, I think they can be boiled down into 3 "big picture" goals. Students and teachers should both be able to understand and implement:
1.Creative Use of Technology
2. Ethical Use of Technology
3. Practical Use of Technology
A big part of my job is going to be the creative use of technology to enhance my teaching. It's all about selecting the right tool for the job.For example, if I have a smart board available, I plan to make frequent use of it and it's available functions. I can also use technology creatively to draw in student interest by incorporating pictures and videos found online. I can also attract student interest by using technology to take polls using either google forms or the cell phone polling site. It will be "cool" for students to see their poll results popping up on the screen in real time. Finally, in order to encourage my students to produce the best quality of work, I intend have them publish their projects, with pictures, to a class web page or blog. The fact that it's going to be published should be a good motivator for them.
Ethical use of technology is a bit more tricky. I will certainly be on the look-out for unethical use of technology such as word-for-word copying off of the internet. Fortunately, by using search engines, those things are fairly easy to catch. I will try to emphasize how very serious an issue copying another person's research could be in the real world.
For practical use of technology, an important goal is for my students to be able to organize and chart their research data. I find that high school students often have no idea how to use excel (or google sheets), and those skills are absolutely essential for lab work. Another important tool is power point (or google presentation), and I will be sure that students put together at least one group presentation using a technological visual aide over the course of the semester. I will also refer my students to useful study guides and instructional interactive pages and activities on the internet to assist in developing their understanding outside of class.
1.Creative Use of Technology
2. Ethical Use of Technology
3. Practical Use of Technology
A big part of my job is going to be the creative use of technology to enhance my teaching. It's all about selecting the right tool for the job.For example, if I have a smart board available, I plan to make frequent use of it and it's available functions. I can also use technology creatively to draw in student interest by incorporating pictures and videos found online. I can also attract student interest by using technology to take polls using either google forms or the cell phone polling site. It will be "cool" for students to see their poll results popping up on the screen in real time. Finally, in order to encourage my students to produce the best quality of work, I intend have them publish their projects, with pictures, to a class web page or blog. The fact that it's going to be published should be a good motivator for them.
Ethical use of technology is a bit more tricky. I will certainly be on the look-out for unethical use of technology such as word-for-word copying off of the internet. Fortunately, by using search engines, those things are fairly easy to catch. I will try to emphasize how very serious an issue copying another person's research could be in the real world.
For practical use of technology, an important goal is for my students to be able to organize and chart their research data. I find that high school students often have no idea how to use excel (or google sheets), and those skills are absolutely essential for lab work. Another important tool is power point (or google presentation), and I will be sure that students put together at least one group presentation using a technological visual aide over the course of the semester. I will also refer my students to useful study guides and instructional interactive pages and activities on the internet to assist in developing their understanding outside of class.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Multimedia Project
Here is my multimedia project. It's a screen-toaster video explaining how to use google forms and google forms' possible classroom applications. I don't know why, but the video is moving faster than the audio, but hopefully you can still understand what's going on.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Spreadsheets
For this project, I used Google Sheets. First, I hid tests 1-6 since we're focusing on 7-10. Then, I used the program to get the average score for each student (shown in blue). This will be useful in calculating their grades. Then I took the class average for each tests 7-10 (shown in orange). This information would be useful to the teacher for evaluating the difficulty level of their tests as well as the effectiveness of their teaching. The yellow box is the average of all student's scores, the class average across tests 7-10.
DATA
The next chart I made shows the class average. This would be good to track the overall class progress over time. This chart shows that in this particular class, average test scores are steadily improving.
I next identified which students' averages are below the overall class average of 174.84. Those students' names are highlighted in the brighter green color on the data sheet. I then charted the progress of the below average students.
Based on this data I can see that almost all of the below average students have shown improvement since the beginning of the year, and most show a fairly steady trend of improvement. One anomaly I can easily see is Katherine who has a big drop from test seven to test eight. As a teacher, it may be worth having a talk with Katherine to try to figure out what is going on there.
Overall, I found the google sheets program to be very easy to use in comparison to excel. I think I would have appreciated more flexibility with the charting though. Publishing is easy once you know what to do, but it's not intuitive to figure out.
DATA
The next chart I made shows the class average. This would be good to track the overall class progress over time. This chart shows that in this particular class, average test scores are steadily improving.
I next identified which students' averages are below the overall class average of 174.84. Those students' names are highlighted in the brighter green color on the data sheet. I then charted the progress of the below average students.
Based on this data I can see that almost all of the below average students have shown improvement since the beginning of the year, and most show a fairly steady trend of improvement. One anomaly I can easily see is Katherine who has a big drop from test seven to test eight. As a teacher, it may be worth having a talk with Katherine to try to figure out what is going on there.
Overall, I found the google sheets program to be very easy to use in comparison to excel. I think I would have appreciated more flexibility with the charting though. Publishing is easy once you know what to do, but it's not intuitive to figure out.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
My Favorite Web 2.0 Tools
Web 2.0 is the move from software-based applications downloaded onto computers to entirely web-based applications. These applications can be used to do just about everything that you used to need to download or buy software for, can be accessed from any computer with internet, and, in many cases, don't cost a dime.
Personal Productivity Tool: 4Shared
4Shared is a file hosting service similar to mediafire or megaupload. However, one key feature of 4shared that I have not found on any other file hosting service is the search feature. You can look for the files you want without being given a direct link to them. The interface is easy to use, and you can use up to 10 GB of space. Files can be organized into folders, and you can choose to share entire folders or individual files. Files can also be made private.
A major use for this tool is to send files to group members that are too large to attach to an e-mail. This could include large images, audio, or even video. It can also be used as a tool for backing up and storing files. Links to download relevant files could be placed in project blogs as well. Also, personally if I want to transfer a large file such as a lesson plan with from my personal computer and work on it on a school computer, I can use this program to do so without any additional hardware needed.
Screen Recorder Tool: Screenr
Screenr is a highly easy to use screen recording program. You can select an area of your screen to record, and then it will record every mouse movement, file opened, etc. Everything you do on the screen can then be played back. You can also add audio, verbally explaining what you are doing as you are doing it. The screen-cast can then be uploaded to youtube, your computer, or anywhere else you want to send it.
This would definitely be useful in demonstrating to students how to use certain technologies. For visual learners, verbal explanations or written instructions of how to use a program can be highly confusing. If all they have to do is follow along with what is happening on the screen, they can learn to use the program much more quickly. Also, for online classes or students who have to be absent, entire lectures with both their audio and visual components can be recorded and shared. Students could also demonstrate their mastery of a skill by creating a screen recording of themselves demonstrating that skill and submitting it as an assignment.
Personal Productivity Tool: 4Shared
4Shared is a file hosting service similar to mediafire or megaupload. However, one key feature of 4shared that I have not found on any other file hosting service is the search feature. You can look for the files you want without being given a direct link to them. The interface is easy to use, and you can use up to 10 GB of space. Files can be organized into folders, and you can choose to share entire folders or individual files. Files can also be made private.
A major use for this tool is to send files to group members that are too large to attach to an e-mail. This could include large images, audio, or even video. It can also be used as a tool for backing up and storing files. Links to download relevant files could be placed in project blogs as well. Also, personally if I want to transfer a large file such as a lesson plan with from my personal computer and work on it on a school computer, I can use this program to do so without any additional hardware needed.
Screen Recorder Tool: Screenr
Screenr is a highly easy to use screen recording program. You can select an area of your screen to record, and then it will record every mouse movement, file opened, etc. Everything you do on the screen can then be played back. You can also add audio, verbally explaining what you are doing as you are doing it. The screen-cast can then be uploaded to youtube, your computer, or anywhere else you want to send it.
This would definitely be useful in demonstrating to students how to use certain technologies. For visual learners, verbal explanations or written instructions of how to use a program can be highly confusing. If all they have to do is follow along with what is happening on the screen, they can learn to use the program much more quickly. Also, for online classes or students who have to be absent, entire lectures with both their audio and visual components can be recorded and shared. Students could also demonstrate their mastery of a skill by creating a screen recording of themselves demonstrating that skill and submitting it as an assignment.
Google Forms
Google forms is a tool that allows users to create a survey with a variety of question-type options which can then be used to collect data online. Then the results are automatically input into a tool that could be compared to the well-known Microsoft Excel program. Multiple people can be allowed edit the form and resulting data at once.
Some Ideas For Uses-
-I can see this being used to take surveys of how your students feel the class is going/ what improvements could be made
-Practicing democracy in the classroom
-Taking surveys, and then use that data to generate graphs so students can study graphs in a way that is meaningful to them
-Could used as a quick early assessment to evaluate the current state of your students’ understanding.
Learning Curve-
At first there was some difficulty because the form is saved in google documents in its spreadsheet version. You have to go under the forms menu and click "edit form" to make changes to the questions. However, after the five minutes it took to figure that out, everything was super easy. It's much easier to use and more versatile than any other polling program I've seen.
My Group Contributions-
I created the initial form and document and shared it with my group members. I added a couple sentences to the definition, two bullet points to section 2, and two bullet points to section 3 on the document. I modified the "favorite color" question to include a drop-down menu and added the multiple choice "what do you think of google docs?" question.
Links-
Live Form
Results Sheet
Document
Some Ideas For Uses-
-I can see this being used to take surveys of how your students feel the class is going/ what improvements could be made
-Practicing democracy in the classroom
-Taking surveys, and then use that data to generate graphs so students can study graphs in a way that is meaningful to them
-Could used as a quick early assessment to evaluate the current state of your students’ understanding.
Learning Curve-
At first there was some difficulty because the form is saved in google documents in its spreadsheet version. You have to go under the forms menu and click "edit form" to make changes to the questions. However, after the five minutes it took to figure that out, everything was super easy. It's much easier to use and more versatile than any other polling program I've seen.
My Group Contributions-
I created the initial form and document and shared it with my group members. I added a couple sentences to the definition, two bullet points to section 2, and two bullet points to section 3 on the document. I modified the "favorite color" question to include a drop-down menu and added the multiple choice "what do you think of google docs?" question.
Links-
Live Form
Results Sheet
Document
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)