I must admit that to begin this class I was a little leary of just how exciting it was going to be or rather not be. I must say that so far I have been very pleased with the curriculum and especially the book. I just got my book today but found the reading to be very insightful and very rewarding.
I usually can't stand reading textbooks but this one is the exception for me. I have never been a fan of KWHL for my curricular area, however, this book made me see the error in my ways and I've found this to be something I truly could use. I also found it interesting that ch. 1 showed me a way in which I could use survey monkey in my classroom beyond pushing it for student usage. I like Survey Monkey and find it usefull but just had found a good use for it for my own part of the education system. In addition, I also liked the web showcase idea provided in chapter 3. I currently have my Architecture students printout each of their blueprints for their homes and the best ones I hang in my classroom on my walls. The problem with this is that the parents don't have access to these except on the rare occassion of maybe a parent teacher conference. I think it is really important, even for high school students, to be able to demonstrate to their parents what they have accomplished. Often times our students don't get the praise they desire or desreve and the ability to get some kudos from their parents may just be the highlight of their day.
In all, I think there are several things from these readings that I can implement into my curriculum immediately. I intend to go back and reread these chapters so I can take notes on all the ideas I've conjured up with these new ideas. I look forward to what the future will bring with this book and I must give the Authors a lot of credit for making this book relevant and fresh.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Friday, June 26, 2009
CEDO 520 Week 4
Another Class down, I don't want to think about how many more I have to go. This class has been trying for me as much of the class was rooted in a time where I was not only attempting to complete my assignments for this class but also running a high school softball program, trying to finish up the school year in my "real job", and work with a new puppy I got for hunting this coming fall, not to mention maintaining my marriage. It's done now though and it's off to summer and more time to work on things the way they need and deserve. If not rambling and complaining so let me begin with our coverage of Week 4.
We were asked to begin with an assingment regarding copyright, fair use, and creative commons but this was the last assignment I did as I hate copyright and don't understand an ounce of it. I procrastinated way longer than I should have on this because the assignment scared me and I really didn't want to do it. Once I got into it though, I actually learned some things and found that it wasn't nearly as difficult as I was anticipating. I can't really say that I understand the copyright or fair use parts any better than before as they are still so vague and sparse. I did, however, get the opportunity to learn about Creative Commons licensing and this was pretty awesome. I had never heard of Creative Commons before this class and I find it to be the first common sense approach to copyrights that I have seen. I think this will be a fixture for many years to come and as it gets more and more prevelant I do believe that eventually it will replace fair use and copyright all together.
Our second assignment was to right a blurb on Privacy, Ethics, and Security which I infact did, however, I am not going to spend a whole lot of time talking about it here because to me there really isn't much to talk about. I am not real scared of online banking, online shopping, or online theft because I think it is much easier to track a cyber thief than it is to track someone who has pick pocketed you or stolen your check routing information. I'm not someone who spends his life in fear and this is certainly another one of those circumstances where I just plain refuse to be intimadated or what have you. I am cautious of who I'm buying from and I keep track of my order information, however, that is the extent of my caution.
Our third assignment was the Safe Internet Use for Children. I spent a lot of time putting together a presentation for this assignment so again I'm not going to spend a lot of time rehashing it here. I found it interesting that several articles reported that the statistics for child enticement were greatly overblown. I always kind of thought this until I started seeing all the "To Catch a Predator" shows and they kept routinely pulling guys in. After seeing several of these episodes and their effectiveness it made me think that according to the law of averages, there must be one heck of a lot of predators out there. Many of these reports stated, however, that the numbers were indeed overblown and that in fact it was child harassment that was the more important issue. Overblown or not, the severity of the crime attached with child inticement is enough for me to put it at the top of the list. I learned some great ways to prevent these issues and will in the future pass these along to my students and their parents.
The final assignment was the Second Life assignement. In this assignment we were asked to create a SecondLife account and enter at least 2 of the sites provided to us. I personally entered all of the sights because I was excited for this program and it's uses. I found the program to be intriguing and very enthrauling for students, however, I was disappointed with it's implementation capabilities. I can't see ever using this myself for educational purposes and therefore I lost interest quickly after discovering the lack of benefit for my needs.
In the end, I thought it was a great class with a great teacher but unfortunately terrible timing for me. I enjoy playing with and exploring new technological tools but unfortunately I never had the time to really delve into these tools like I would have liked and that upsets me. I look forward to begining my next class and having a little more time to commit to it.
We were asked to begin with an assingment regarding copyright, fair use, and creative commons but this was the last assignment I did as I hate copyright and don't understand an ounce of it. I procrastinated way longer than I should have on this because the assignment scared me and I really didn't want to do it. Once I got into it though, I actually learned some things and found that it wasn't nearly as difficult as I was anticipating. I can't really say that I understand the copyright or fair use parts any better than before as they are still so vague and sparse. I did, however, get the opportunity to learn about Creative Commons licensing and this was pretty awesome. I had never heard of Creative Commons before this class and I find it to be the first common sense approach to copyrights that I have seen. I think this will be a fixture for many years to come and as it gets more and more prevelant I do believe that eventually it will replace fair use and copyright all together.
Our second assignment was to right a blurb on Privacy, Ethics, and Security which I infact did, however, I am not going to spend a whole lot of time talking about it here because to me there really isn't much to talk about. I am not real scared of online banking, online shopping, or online theft because I think it is much easier to track a cyber thief than it is to track someone who has pick pocketed you or stolen your check routing information. I'm not someone who spends his life in fear and this is certainly another one of those circumstances where I just plain refuse to be intimadated or what have you. I am cautious of who I'm buying from and I keep track of my order information, however, that is the extent of my caution.
Our third assignment was the Safe Internet Use for Children. I spent a lot of time putting together a presentation for this assignment so again I'm not going to spend a lot of time rehashing it here. I found it interesting that several articles reported that the statistics for child enticement were greatly overblown. I always kind of thought this until I started seeing all the "To Catch a Predator" shows and they kept routinely pulling guys in. After seeing several of these episodes and their effectiveness it made me think that according to the law of averages, there must be one heck of a lot of predators out there. Many of these reports stated, however, that the numbers were indeed overblown and that in fact it was child harassment that was the more important issue. Overblown or not, the severity of the crime attached with child inticement is enough for me to put it at the top of the list. I learned some great ways to prevent these issues and will in the future pass these along to my students and their parents.
The final assignment was the Second Life assignement. In this assignment we were asked to create a SecondLife account and enter at least 2 of the sites provided to us. I personally entered all of the sights because I was excited for this program and it's uses. I found the program to be intriguing and very enthrauling for students, however, I was disappointed with it's implementation capabilities. I can't see ever using this myself for educational purposes and therefore I lost interest quickly after discovering the lack of benefit for my needs.
In the end, I thought it was a great class with a great teacher but unfortunately terrible timing for me. I enjoy playing with and exploring new technological tools but unfortunately I never had the time to really delve into these tools like I would have liked and that upsets me. I look forward to begining my next class and having a little more time to commit to it.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
CEDO520 Week 3
In week 3 we spent a lot of time working with partners to research various technological tools for implementation in the classroom. My partner and I spent a lot of time researching of these tools and trying to find ways that each could be implemented into the classroom.
Like anything, some of these tools I found to be very beneficial and some I found to be virtually useless. I'm not going to spend much time being a negative nelly so I will discuss some of the tools that I found to be very usefull.
The tools that I really liked were Google For Educators, Google Forms, Survey Monkey, Bloglines, Backpack, and Tokbox. The Google For Educators was just so diverse in it's uses for the classroom that I don't have enough time or room to discuss all the possibilities I thought of when using this program. Obviously it is largly a conglomorate of current Google Tools, however, it is awful nice to have them in one location as well as to have a site dedicated to advancing us as instructors. On a similar note, I also was quite excited about Google Forms and the possibilities it presented. A major reason that I am in this particular program is my desire to become more digital in my instruction and this application provides me some very viable ways of transitioning to that. I see the Google Forms as being a very easy and effective means of creating tests and the automatic grading aspect and data analysis doesn't hurt either. Just as importantly would be the fact that I could allow students to fill in medical information from home where they have their parents assistance and it would be stored online. This could be really beneficial if a student were to change doctors, phone numbers, or residence because they could just log-on and update the information in real time and it would take away much of the leg work for me. Survey Monkey I'm not sure how much I would use but when I would use it I could see it making life way easier for me. I currently do a lesson on invention where I have my students brainstorm a product and take it from conceptualization to creation and part of that process includes surveying their prospective market. I could see my students really using this application to assist them in that process. I could also see myself using Bloglines as a means of helping to hold my students accountable for their learning by asking them to right a response to what they've learned, much like we are doing with these blogs. Backpack seemed to be a really cool sight and one that I could see myself using as well. I'm not sure I will get the chance as my school district is currently attempting to go to an interactive web setup that seems to be similar to this, however, if they do not go to this new setup, I am definately pulling this application out of my new bag of tricks. I'm someone who really needs to have a series of assignments laid out in front of me as a constant reminder of what I need to do and when I need to do it by and I think many of my students are the same way. In addition, I think that the ability to share files and images would greatly assist the students in completing their assignments as well as reducing the amount of paper I would be using in my classroom. Finally, the last application I found to be interesting was Tokbox. I don't see a lot of need for Tokbox in the classroom but I do find the possibilities stimulating. I have always been someone who has been an advocate for accountability in the classroom. I never believed in telling a teacher when, where, and why they were going to be evaluated as I see so many teachers who then spend all of their time preparing for that one lesson and that is not a true representation of their teaching abilities. With Tokbox, you would have to be accountable as a teacher should you choose to allow parents or administrators to drop in on your class at any given time. I could see using Tokbox to create presentations and then showing them rather than having students get up in front of the class and give presentations. I like the instruction that comes with presentations, however, I hate the amount of time it takes for students to switch presentors, get setup, get going, and then answer questions. I think this system would greatly reduce that time. In addition, I could most predominately see using this to record a video myself and post for students in the case I was to be absent. I could continue to instruct my class without actually being there and I love that fact.
In all this lesson was a very rewarding one for me. I'm always trying to build my bag of tricks and refresh the old tricks. This lesson provided me with a lot of great ideas and things I will implement into my classroom. I'm looking forward to trying some of these applications in the classroom and hope my students will enjoy them and see their merit like I have.
Like anything, some of these tools I found to be very beneficial and some I found to be virtually useless. I'm not going to spend much time being a negative nelly so I will discuss some of the tools that I found to be very usefull.
The tools that I really liked were Google For Educators, Google Forms, Survey Monkey, Bloglines, Backpack, and Tokbox. The Google For Educators was just so diverse in it's uses for the classroom that I don't have enough time or room to discuss all the possibilities I thought of when using this program. Obviously it is largly a conglomorate of current Google Tools, however, it is awful nice to have them in one location as well as to have a site dedicated to advancing us as instructors. On a similar note, I also was quite excited about Google Forms and the possibilities it presented. A major reason that I am in this particular program is my desire to become more digital in my instruction and this application provides me some very viable ways of transitioning to that. I see the Google Forms as being a very easy and effective means of creating tests and the automatic grading aspect and data analysis doesn't hurt either. Just as importantly would be the fact that I could allow students to fill in medical information from home where they have their parents assistance and it would be stored online. This could be really beneficial if a student were to change doctors, phone numbers, or residence because they could just log-on and update the information in real time and it would take away much of the leg work for me. Survey Monkey I'm not sure how much I would use but when I would use it I could see it making life way easier for me. I currently do a lesson on invention where I have my students brainstorm a product and take it from conceptualization to creation and part of that process includes surveying their prospective market. I could see my students really using this application to assist them in that process. I could also see myself using Bloglines as a means of helping to hold my students accountable for their learning by asking them to right a response to what they've learned, much like we are doing with these blogs. Backpack seemed to be a really cool sight and one that I could see myself using as well. I'm not sure I will get the chance as my school district is currently attempting to go to an interactive web setup that seems to be similar to this, however, if they do not go to this new setup, I am definately pulling this application out of my new bag of tricks. I'm someone who really needs to have a series of assignments laid out in front of me as a constant reminder of what I need to do and when I need to do it by and I think many of my students are the same way. In addition, I think that the ability to share files and images would greatly assist the students in completing their assignments as well as reducing the amount of paper I would be using in my classroom. Finally, the last application I found to be interesting was Tokbox. I don't see a lot of need for Tokbox in the classroom but I do find the possibilities stimulating. I have always been someone who has been an advocate for accountability in the classroom. I never believed in telling a teacher when, where, and why they were going to be evaluated as I see so many teachers who then spend all of their time preparing for that one lesson and that is not a true representation of their teaching abilities. With Tokbox, you would have to be accountable as a teacher should you choose to allow parents or administrators to drop in on your class at any given time. I could see using Tokbox to create presentations and then showing them rather than having students get up in front of the class and give presentations. I like the instruction that comes with presentations, however, I hate the amount of time it takes for students to switch presentors, get setup, get going, and then answer questions. I think this system would greatly reduce that time. In addition, I could most predominately see using this to record a video myself and post for students in the case I was to be absent. I could continue to instruct my class without actually being there and I love that fact.
In all this lesson was a very rewarding one for me. I'm always trying to build my bag of tricks and refresh the old tricks. This lesson provided me with a lot of great ideas and things I will implement into my classroom. I'm looking forward to trying some of these applications in the classroom and hope my students will enjoy them and see their merit like I have.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
CEDO 520 Week #2
In week two, we were asked to research some resources such as Noodle Tools and Wikipedia. This assignment was right up my alley as I am very much entrenched in the battle of to use Wikipedia or not to Wikipedia as many of our teachers refuse to even listen to arguments about it, however, I believe it is a valuable starting point for educating students on what to research. In addition, I had been hearing about Noodle for some time but just hadn't gotten the time or the energy to really delve into learning about the tool until I was forced to do so for this class.
I found Noodle Tools to be every bit as awesome as I had been hearing and I believe this will rapidly replace Google as my primary search engine. In fact, I liked Noodle so much that for my end of the year engineering research paper that I require for my Principles students, I asked that each student make a gmail acct. (NOTE: if you have more than 15 students trying to create a gmail acct. from one IP address, Google will disallow as a means of protecting against false accts.). I then asked my students to logon to Noodle and begin searching the field of Engineering using the Clusty to get ideas for their presentations. Once the students determined a particular sub-category within the field of Engineering, the student was then asked to prepare a powerpoint presentation using Google and invite me and preferably all the other students as viewers so they could have access to the data and statistics at any given time.
As for the Wikipedia assignment, I found it very interesting to find that many of my classmates had similar beliefs as myself in that Wikipedia is a good source to begin researching from but not necessarily a final stop along the journey towards enlightenment. I also found it to be interesting that while going through this assignment, I actually had a student who had contacted the Webmaster for Wikipedia regarding the validity of their information so as to present this data to his English teachers for the purpose of helping them realize that the information is monitored closely. I informed this student of my current assignment and informed him of my beliefs and my findings and by combining his data along with my philosophy, he actually got one of our English teachers to agree to accept Wikipedia when combined with other resources verifying the data found from Wikipedia.
In all, this weeks of assignments were such that I could implement immediately and were every bit worthy of implementation. I enjoyed these assignments greatly and look forward to continued use of Noodle Tools and gaining a better understanding of it's nuances. In addition, I happy to have a furthered understanding of Wikipedia and will continue to allow it's inclusion in research for my classroom given the meeting of some basic criterium when using it.
I found Noodle Tools to be every bit as awesome as I had been hearing and I believe this will rapidly replace Google as my primary search engine. In fact, I liked Noodle so much that for my end of the year engineering research paper that I require for my Principles students, I asked that each student make a gmail acct. (NOTE: if you have more than 15 students trying to create a gmail acct. from one IP address, Google will disallow as a means of protecting against false accts.). I then asked my students to logon to Noodle and begin searching the field of Engineering using the Clusty to get ideas for their presentations. Once the students determined a particular sub-category within the field of Engineering, the student was then asked to prepare a powerpoint presentation using Google and invite me and preferably all the other students as viewers so they could have access to the data and statistics at any given time.
As for the Wikipedia assignment, I found it very interesting to find that many of my classmates had similar beliefs as myself in that Wikipedia is a good source to begin researching from but not necessarily a final stop along the journey towards enlightenment. I also found it to be interesting that while going through this assignment, I actually had a student who had contacted the Webmaster for Wikipedia regarding the validity of their information so as to present this data to his English teachers for the purpose of helping them realize that the information is monitored closely. I informed this student of my current assignment and informed him of my beliefs and my findings and by combining his data along with my philosophy, he actually got one of our English teachers to agree to accept Wikipedia when combined with other resources verifying the data found from Wikipedia.
In all, this weeks of assignments were such that I could implement immediately and were every bit worthy of implementation. I enjoyed these assignments greatly and look forward to continued use of Noodle Tools and gaining a better understanding of it's nuances. In addition, I happy to have a furthered understanding of Wikipedia and will continue to allow it's inclusion in research for my classroom given the meeting of some basic criterium when using it.
CEDO 520 Week #1
Ok, so I know I'm late in getting these entries in but please hang with me as I try to catch up over the next week. Things have been hectic in my life as my softball team made it one game away from going to state before falling a hair short causing me to put off my Master's work as well as my grading so now that we have 2 days of school left I'm trying to cram everything in and maintain some sanity. The worst part is that now that my season is done and the school year is coming to a close, my wife believes that I should be doing all the things on her honey-do-list that I've been putting off until now.
Well enough wasting time because I don't have it yet to waste. I can't wait until Thur. though when I actually have some free time to get all of this stuff done though.
Anyway, we were asked to research internet learning resources in Week 1 and that is what I will discuss briefly here today. In the beginning, when reviewing our assignments I thought "oh, boy! Whoooooo Hooooo, this is going to be fun! NOT!" Boy was I wrong, I actually did enjoy this assignment and found it very interesting and useful for that which I do. In my Engineering and Architecture classes I always require one research paper as a means of creating some cross-curricular instruction but I've never really spent much time thinking about where my students were getting their information from. This assignment really forced me to sit down and evaluate my procedures on this and showed me an efficient and meaningful way to provide further instruction on my research assignments. In addition, this assignment caused me to think about just how much research I actually ask the students to do in my classes and therefore caused me to think about restructuring my curriculum to teach students the proper way to research before going through the entire class with no clue. For instance, in my Architecture class I begin by giving the students the assignment of designing a home within 100sq.ft. of 2,200 sq.ft. under the price of $500,000. I provide them with 4 plots of land that they must research and price out when determining their plot. In addition, they must research the local building codes in that local. I also provide some mandates as to what the students homes must contain, eg. brick in a given sub-division or septic and water needs in another location. The students must research the costs associated with these requirements and then subtract them from their grand total. What ensues is students searching high and low to find given costs and me running around to confirm that their findings are accurate. If I were to provide them with a foundation for research before hand, this would greatly reduce my need to run around like a chicken with my head cut off.
I really liked Kathey Schrock's form for evaluating websites and modified her form slightly to fit my needs in the classroom. I think that providing this form to my students combined with providing them some new forms of internet resources like noodle tools, their searches will result in better data as well as create a more efficient method for my students.
Well enough wasting time because I don't have it yet to waste. I can't wait until Thur. though when I actually have some free time to get all of this stuff done though.
Anyway, we were asked to research internet learning resources in Week 1 and that is what I will discuss briefly here today. In the beginning, when reviewing our assignments I thought "oh, boy! Whoooooo Hooooo, this is going to be fun! NOT!" Boy was I wrong, I actually did enjoy this assignment and found it very interesting and useful for that which I do. In my Engineering and Architecture classes I always require one research paper as a means of creating some cross-curricular instruction but I've never really spent much time thinking about where my students were getting their information from. This assignment really forced me to sit down and evaluate my procedures on this and showed me an efficient and meaningful way to provide further instruction on my research assignments. In addition, this assignment caused me to think about just how much research I actually ask the students to do in my classes and therefore caused me to think about restructuring my curriculum to teach students the proper way to research before going through the entire class with no clue. For instance, in my Architecture class I begin by giving the students the assignment of designing a home within 100sq.ft. of 2,200 sq.ft. under the price of $500,000. I provide them with 4 plots of land that they must research and price out when determining their plot. In addition, they must research the local building codes in that local. I also provide some mandates as to what the students homes must contain, eg. brick in a given sub-division or septic and water needs in another location. The students must research the costs associated with these requirements and then subtract them from their grand total. What ensues is students searching high and low to find given costs and me running around to confirm that their findings are accurate. If I were to provide them with a foundation for research before hand, this would greatly reduce my need to run around like a chicken with my head cut off.
I really liked Kathey Schrock's form for evaluating websites and modified her form slightly to fit my needs in the classroom. I think that providing this form to my students combined with providing them some new forms of internet resources like noodle tools, their searches will result in better data as well as create a more efficient method for my students.
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