Digital Story Telling

3 Facts

1. Stories are usually short
2. Includes seven key elements
3. Uses video and graphics to tell a story

INTERACTIVE WHITEBOARDS

Wow, Interactive Whiteboards are a great tool that every teacher should use. They are easy to use, they engage students, studies show they increase student's retention and it reaches students on a whole new level. Students really are a part of your lesson when you use this great tool. They can go to the board and work together to create projects. If used correctly they are a great tool. Unfortunately, many teacher do not know how to use them, they are either untrained or unwilling to use try them. They use them as expensive overhead projectors or as expensive movie players. This is dangerous, because they are depriving students of a great assest to learning. Our students' today are digital nativies. The things that used to engage us and get us excited are not the same for them. They love technology, are knowledgable about it and are amazed by it. That is why interactive whiteboards work so well. Today's students need the technology and the interactivity. They have the attention spans of nats, if your lesson does not involve them and engage them you will lose them. There are so many websites and other resources available that there is really no excuse for any educator to not properly use these tools!!!

Class on 04/20/09

Tonight's class was interesting. We kind of reviewed our Wiki projects and the charts that we created. The charts were usefull in that it showed us how we have addressed each of the learning standards for technology in our class. Also, it showed us how by using technology and collaboration together we can very easily intergrate technology into any classroom. I think that we as educators just need to make the effort, and yes we need to be willing to give up some control and let the kids learn on their own. It will help them to develop those higher learning thinking skills that they will need when they are at a job.

I thought our group's presentation went very well. We went a little longer then the allotted time, but I felt it was ok; because we involved the class. We simply did not just lecture at them, we got them involved. Which is something that we have learned to do in this class. Technology is so well developed now that we, can give control to the class and then take it back and not have it disrupt the whole presentation. The more I see things like this, the more convinced I become that we will someday not have regular classrooms and all schools will be online.

I feel that the ICP project is going to be challenging; however, I think that it will be fun at the same time. I look forward to trying to put to use the tools that I have learned so far. I just hope that I am able to include all the requirments that are necessary. Looking at the requirments and the rubric, there is alot to include.

Creating my own quiz

I created a quiz on line on ProProf. I thought that it was easy to use and that it would be good to give as an online quiz to your students. It would be another way to institute technology into your classroom. Also, if you create essay or short answer questions for your students, they can work on their typing skills. However, I think that students get enough practice typing when they are on their social networking tools. I think that it is important to continue to require stutents to use a pen and paper. I think that not enough students are good enough writers. They need work on their penmanship and essay writing. Not everything that they do at work in the furture will be online and they need to get in the habit of using good writing techniques.

ASSESSMENT - WEEK 12

As this cartoon demonstrates, the nation as a whole has become test crazy. We judge everything by a serious or numbers, or a score on a test. However, that is just what they are some arbitatry number that really does not mean anything. It really does not tell us how much the student has really learned. There are too many factors that go in to a simple test to determine if they are accurately jugdeging how much a student has learned. Some of the factors that can affect test scores are, how the test was worded. If it is worded incorrectly it can confuse the student and we may not really be assessing what we wanted to assess. Also, some students may not read well, so are we assessing their knolwedge of the subject, or are we assessing how well they read? Also, what if they were not taught what was on the state test, the teacher may have taught something completely different then what was suppossed to be in the curriculum. Another problem that may arrise in traditional assessement are enviornmental factors; was it noisy, was it too hot or too cold, was it too quite, was the student sick, did they not eat dinner the night before, or breakfast the morning of, is there a divorce going on at home?, are they wondering if their parents will be able to pay the heating bill?.....There are just far too many factors that can play into traditional assessment.

The other problem with traditional assessment is, what is it doing to prepare the student for the real world. How often are asked to take a test for a job? Or for a promotion? More often then not you will be graded on the quaility of your work. Do you write well, do you communicate well with others, do you have good gramar and spelling in your reports, can you think on your feet, can you make good decisions. These are the types of thing we need to grade our students on. We need to give them essays, projects, make them work in groups so that they have to communicate and work towards a common goal, we need to assess them on things that will be beneficial to thenm in the future. Even as they move on to college and further along in their education they will be graded based more on their reading and writing skills, and their ability to make connections then if they can pass some test.

So what does that mean for us as teachers?? For one thing it means more work. We need to sit down and actually grade papers and read through essays and think about what our students are saying, rather then simply checking if a mulitpile choice question is correct or not. However, these authentic assessments are more beneficial to our students and will really be a better judge of our skill set as an educator.

Group 12 Meetings

Our group meetings this week went extremely well. We first meet on Monday night and worked on the group wiki project. We put all our assignmemnts on the chart and did the best we could aligning them to the National Technology Standards. I felt that alot of our assignments for this course align with the standards. All of our assingments force us to build on prior knowledge, explore new technology as a group and individualy, we learn about new technology and we communicate via technology (such as: model, wiziq, email, gchat, aol and even cellphones on occassion). I think the harderst part is taking what we have learned and incorporating them into the classroo, so that we as teachers meet the the technology standards. What I find to be the biggest challenge at my school, is that there is only one computer lab and one computer in my classroom. It makes it hard at times to have the students do alot of exploring on the computer. I do try to take advantage of what opportunities I do have and have them work on assingments in groups or individually on the computer. Another difficult obstacle to overcome is that many of my students do not have computers at home. Many of my students come from a lower economical stratus then many other students. Their parents simply cannot afford to have computers in the home. I have been trying to overcome this by finding places that they can go close to their homes that has free internet and computer axcess. What really amazes me is how technologically savey all these students are despite not having a computer in the house. They have been using computers in school since they were in Kindergarten so they are still digitial natives.

Our second group meeting this week we worked on our power point project. I think that it came out very well. We tried to keep it to a minimum number of slides, so that we will not have the dreaded death by power point. Also, we are going to attempt to not simply read from our slides, but use them as tool to enhance our presentations. I believe that this will keep with the spirit of what Dr. S has been telling us about power point all along.

My Engrade Experience

I really like the engrade site. I keep my grades for my class on an excel spreadsheet, but unfortunately I have not been able to organize it so that it would calculate the grades for me. It is pretty much like a regular grade book without the pen and paper. At the end of each quarter I have to sit there and figure out grades for all my class. With Engrade as long as you enter all the grades and their weights correctly it will give you the weighted averages and can save lots of time when it comes to report cards. Also, it takes some of the human error out of the calculations, it calculates it for you. The only thing I did not like about it was that you can not see all the grades at once. You have to move from screen to screen. If you want to double check yourself it can add some additional time. However I do not think it is a big deal. I also liked that you can keep attendance on the site as well. That is one less thing, again, that you have to figure out come report card time. Instead of sitting there and going through attendance records you can look right on the site.
However, the best part was the calendar. As a teacher we send home with our students, assingments, quiz dates, test dates, and project due dates. However, we never know if they make it home or not, till we get an irrate parent calling asking why a report you gave them a month to do, they think we only gave the student a night to do it. With this site, you can add these to your calendar and give parents the ability to log in and see it. This will keep some of the "surprises" that occur during each quarter to a minimum. Also, parents can check grades right on the site. When my students fail a test or quiz, I have them get their parents to sign it. And a couple of times I have come to find out at the end of a quarter, that the student is signing the parent's name. This could eliminate that problem and make it easier for parents to stay involved in what is going on in school.
Something that I think could improve the site would be an area for general messages. This would allow you to interact with parents and let them know what is coming up in class. It will allow parents to stay more involved as well, you could have the parents aware of the assignments that will be due in the future, before the students even know. The only negative of that, is some parents could get overzealous and have their student start the project before you have the chance to explain exactly what it is your want done in the project and what they will be grade on.
I personally think that parents and students will both like this site. We live in a world where more often then not, both parents work fulltime and do not have time to call or to come to the school to know what is going on. This allows the parent to stay involved while at work or late at night when they finally have a time to sit down and think about these things. For students should they lose the due date for a project they can check right online. Also, how often does a student walk up to you and say what is my average this quarter????? Now they can check their progress on their own.