End of Semseter Blog

It seemed like the semester just flew by this year. I did finish everything before the end which was great. I was so busy teaching and coaching it was a real time juggle for me. I did learn a lot about different technologies and how they can be used in the classroom. Digital stories are a good tool if you have time in your schedule to put them together. I feel if I were to make digital stories for my classes it would have to be done over the summer. I am glad that they introduced engrade to everyone Before i used engrade it would take me hours to do students final grade reports with averaging grades and dropping grades. I tell the other teachers that I work with about engrade and how easy and effective it is for the classroom. The group work went much more smoothly then I thought it would have. The only think that was a drawback was that sometimes there was a delay between when I would talk and when everyone would hear me. Overall though this semester was a success not only in getting work done but also in seeing how there is a lot of online help for teachers. This summer when I am reviewing my curriculum I will be trying to add in more technology for the students.

Digital Story

This project was a little frustrating to me. I had a topic about the life of a baseball player. I had all the pictures I wanted and a few clips. When I tried to create the video, I could not get my videos to download into my movie. Worst of all I tried to record my voice and could not. There is a narrative feature on the program but it would not work at all. So I tried a few other voice programs online but those still did not work correctly. So I ended up just adding music and some title slides to help explain my video. I wish that the process when more smoothly but it was tough to get it to work and I wanted to try to hand something in at least. I guess this is what happens sometimes with technology. In the video I was looking to show how baseball is Americas past time, that players have a wide variety of equipment to pick from, then how a career in baseball starts in little league. Next the skills learned young can be turned into outstanding plays when the little leaguers grow up and become big leaders. I wanted to show that there is pain involved with greatness and showed some people getting injured while playing. But then at the end having them over come their injury to win a championship and hold that trophy high over their head.

WoW Project: Finally Finished

I have finally finished my WoW project. My WoW project was on using interactive technology in the3 science classroom. I thought this was a great topic for me since I am currently a middle school science teacher. Technology provides many different learning experiences for students. Most times schools are not going to have the equipment that is necessary to do experiments because of the cost. So by using online tools, students can still do the same experiments just virtually. This helps to reduce costs to the school without sacrificing learning for students. Some of the online tools that I found were virtual operations. I thought these were great. Students can perform hip replacement surgery, a heart transplant, or even brain surgery. Without these programs students would never have the opportunity to do these types of experiments. By doing these it may inspire some students to become doctors or go into the medical field. Dissections are an important part of the learning experience but some students are against cutting into a dead animal. This is where online dissections come into play. Students can go online and see the inside of an of an organisms without having to touch it or without having to have an organism die. Also technology can be used to show videos of complex ideas or of experiments that could take years to do. When doing my project I did a PowerPoint in which I used different colors, moving pictures, and different links to demonstrate how technology can be used. The links will allow the class to do different short activities and view different videos. The presentations will be a general overview of the different types of actives that can be blended in to a typical science curriculum. Below is the link to my wiki page which has the link to my presentation. Frank Snyder Wiki Page

Setting up My litacme21 Page

I only found out that we needed to create a page about 1 month ago. I requested accesses to the website and it took about 2 weeks to get a confirmation. I finally got a chance to set up my page. It was hard finding time right now to sit down and work on my page since I have been preparing my students for the up and coming state exams and baseball season has been in full swing. When setting up my page I found it pretty easy. I included some basic background information about my self. The picture I picked was myself holding a rattle snake that I had caught at one of my jobs. I then went into a brief detail on my personal teaching philosophy. I believe that studetns learn best by doing hand on activities that require them to use their problem solving skills. The only way that problems get solved in the real world is through critical thinking and insight. So it is vital to have students practice these skills in a controlled classroom environment. I then added links to most of my work that I handed in through out the year. I still have to complete a few assignments this weekend and then my WoW presentation.

Engrade

I love using engrade. I have actually been using engrade all this year in my classroom. I found that it makes doing grades at the end of each quarter much easier and quicker. Engrade allows you see in real time how a grade affects a students overall performance. Engrade also allows you print out students grade reports. This is a good feature in that it allows students to see what they are missing and if you send it home it allows parents to see where their son or daughter is struggling. Engrade also allows you to give parents access to their students grades. Each student has their own id which can be turned into an account that the student or parent can see from their home computer at anytime. Engrade has a calendar feature in that every assignment you put in is placed onto a calendar. Engrade allows you to post quizzes and wikis online. Parents can also send you messages on your engrade account. This feature acts like an email acount for the teacher. Engrade also allows you to archive your previous classes or quarters. In engrade you can also print out your grade book if you need to have a hard copy for your records. If the teacher wants, they can make flash cards online for students to help them learn vocabulary.  I find only positive things with engrade. It is a great tool to use for the teacher to help keep them organized and to keep the students organized (by giving them a grade print out). It also is a great communication tool for teachers to use with parents. I like engrade and will keep using it in my classroom.

Class on Creativity

Lasts week class was all about creativity. Now many different people had their own opinion on what creativity is. To me creativity is being able to take normal or average information and change it in a way that can better benefit a student. Whether that is with old fashion paper and pencil drawings or with new high tech computer animations. All that matters is that students are able to obtain information and then use the information later on.  Our teacher is hosting an international conference which we were asked to attend. I would like to attend the conference but it is at 10 am and I have a teaching job and can not get off to go to the conference.  Hopefully later on in the semester there will be another conference that is at a better time for me so I can attend. I am now trying to start my digital story. I have been looking through the videos and articles on the digital story telling and do not think it will be to difficult. The hard thing that I am experiencing is finding time to complete this task. I have just taken on another class at my job, my coaching job, and my transition B work have taken up a lot of time. Hopefully I will have time to complete this task by the end of the week.

Week 8 5 E Lesson Plan and Group Project

This week was a group work week. This week the group worked on constructivism. Constructivism is the theory that the teacher will guide the students through learning instead of directing them. Many times teachers are just the vessel for passing and telling students information. In this model students are passive learners. In the constructivism model, students are active learners. The students are provided with activities that enhance their learning making them actively think and use new information. This helps the students to get a better understanding of the material and how it cold be used in the real world. In our group my job was to a 5 E lesson plan. The 5 E lesson plan is  a constructive science lesson plan. I picked a lesson on how viruses would spread. In the lesson students will simulate how one infected individual can pass on the infection to other in the class by sharing a drink. Student will observe how infections can quickly spread among populations.  I also have to create a few popwerpoint slides for our groups presentation. My slides will be on the lesson plan just giving the class a brief outline of what the lesson is about. Overall the group worked well again in preforming the tasks of the webquest.

Making a PowerPoint

When we were asked to make a PowerPoint in our group, I thought how easy, I use PowerPoint almost everyday in my classroom. We used Google docs to upload our PowerPoint so that each member could work on their part. When doing this however I found that there are some limitations to the Google docs presentation software. The software only allows you to up load Microsoft PowerPoint slides that are saved in the 2003 version. This would not be an issue except it prevents some animations from being used. When I present in my classroom, I find that having animations is very eye catching for students and people in general. So with out the extras PowerPoint can become plain. So in the future I hope that google docs up dates their software so that animations can be used. Other then that one catch, having everyone work on the presentation in that one spot was very time efficient and helpful.

The Internet and ME

In my class on of the assignments was to make a digital footprint of myself. Before I started this assignment I wondered what  I would find about my self just out their on the internet. When I searched my self I found that there is a lot out there about me. All the articles that are out there are about me playing sports. Most of the recent articles are about my college baseball career. I was able to find some articles about me from the Mount on how I was a part time teacher and player at the college last year.There are some articles that are still floating around there about my high school football team from 7 years ago. Toward the bottom of the page they had information about my family (mother, Father, and brother)It was good to find that there are only good things about me on the internet so far which is good if a future employer was to ever look me up.

Week 4 Google Tools

This week I found out how easy it is o work in a group on a single document with out have to keep re-saving a new file or uploading a new document. By using Gmail there are many options right in the gmail that allow to to view, download, and work on different types of files, jpegs, videos. This week in our group we started to work on our teacher toolkit. Each person in our group took their own area of study to make a tool kit.  Since I am a science teacher I took the science part of our kit. I found about ten different websites that allows teachers to find information quickly on worksheet, lesson plans, and lab activities. In less then a week our group finished our teacher toolkit. We used the same name as our teacher page automation foundation. Each section was divided up into MAth, Science, English, and History. All the links on the page work and the design of the page matches the design of our regular homepage for automation foundation. One step that our group had to do was create an email address that everyone could use so that we could all access the teacher toolkit. So we came up with  automationfondation@gmail.com. Now anyone in the group can make changes to the toolkit in the future. This week took a  very strong collaborative effort by all the member of our group and each one of us did an excellent job.

Internet Safety

While doing the internet safety assignment I learned a few different things. One main thing was that SPAM email acts as a blocker of bandwidth. I used to think of SPAM as just an annoyance but it can actually cause slowing of your system. CAUCE is a group that is trying to get laws passed to prevent SPAM or at least reduce the amount of SPAM that can be sent by large companies. Most of the time however the large companies can afford to prevent legislation against their SPAM so no meaningful laws are passed or enforced. Also when surfing the web you should check on the right to see if the site is approved by the search engine so you do not access any sites that can infect your computer. When chatting with others people should be careful not to give out personal information or to use their real name when entering a chat room.  The internet is a wonderful tool to use but there are things on the internet that you have to be aware of and careful of. When using the computer just think before you give out personal information, download a file, or enter a certain website.

Week 3 Highlights and assignment

For someone with computer literacy they have knowledge and understanding of computers and their uses. Information literacy is when a person can gather, analyze, and use the information they have to solve a problem or complete an assignment. Integration literacy is when the teacher uses technology to provide students with the tools they need to discover information by using computers. Literacy of the future is having students not only being able to read and write but also having students be able to surf the web for information and be able to analyze what they find. Digital students differ from regular students in that digital students are used to having answers to their question in seconds not days or hours. A typical student would have to use a textbook or some other paper resource to discover an answer to a question which may take some time. A digital student can type into a browsers what they are looking for and get thousands of answers and resources in seconds with out having to go anywhere. 
 The 3rd National Education Technology  Standard : Research and Information Fluency is used fairly commonly in schools. Most teachers have their students use the internet to find out information to complete assignments. Along with NETS 3 , NET4 is also used in the classroom ( Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making). NETS 3 and 4 go hand in hand with each other when students are trying ot complete different research bases assignments. 
The shift to classroom 2.0 is the new and upcoming way to educate students. Now classroom 2.0 can range from a teacher posting classroom notes and assignments on a web page to the entire class being online. Now students do not have to be in the same room as the teacher to be able to be educated.These types of classrooms will allow students who have to stay home to not miss out on learning. One of the problems with classroom 2.0 is that if a student does not have internet access then they will miss out. 
When I was going through google docs I found that you can make everything on there that you can make using Microsoft 2007. There are slide shows, excel and word documents. I had gmail for a while now and never knew it had that feature. It will help when having to do collaborative projects with others in the future. 

Starting Off

This is the first time I have ever taken an online class. I am pretty good with technology since I use everyday in my classroom. Some of these things that I have had to sign up for I have never heard of. This is my first blog that I have ever written. I usually am very busy with work or coaching at the college. So this semester I just have to stay on top of this online work so I do not end up pulling all nighters.