Week 13

The process of filming a movie is so much more intense and difficult than you think it is before you start. You think, oh I'll just film a few scenes and then just stick them together. But the mose sense it makes in your head, the less sense it makes when you start to film. I suppose it's different for kids, because obviously they aren't expected to produce Spielberg, but it still takes a lot of planning beforehand in order to avoid gaps in reasoning. Concerns with using video in the classroom are pretty much the same as with any activity. Teachers need to make sure that students are staying on task when they are off filming on their own and make sure that they are safe in whatever they are doing. Keeping it appropriate is also a problem when you are giving kids a camera to film their actions, especially in the older grades. However, an assignment involving filming a movie is still great for kids of all ages. It allows them to be creative and really take charge of their assignment. They work on everything from time management to group work and get to use media materials, which, for most students, is probably a rarity. Lacking anything else, I think video making it just a good opportunity for students who have little other opportunity to learn in that manner.
I liked the reading this week because it makes way, almost gives permission, to use fun and creativity in the classroom, even for the more "serious" subjects. Many times projects like videos are deemed as purely fun with no real educational merit; but as this reading proves and explains, it's not so difficult to make a real lesson plan with a video project. Obviously, there needs to be a good basis for the lesson with a true educational purpose and a clear area of information to be learned/expressed. I remember freshman year of high school we had to film a video of a modern day interpretation of a scene from Romeo and Juliet. Our group picked the shortest scene possible and spent more time on costumes than anything else and then someone decided we needed to spend $100 to have it professionally edited. A worthless experience, all in all, and perfect example of how not to do a video project. On the flip side, in another project from school, our groups were given the option of doing a video. The topic was more refined and pointed and guidelines were more strict for a better outcome. Students who did videos concentrated more on the idea rather than the process, which ended in actual education. I suppose this is just a long winded way of saying that the way the Scot/Harding article is layed out helps teachers have a better idea of how to impliment a video project in a helpful manner.

Week 12

I was surprised, mostly, by how unaccessible most of the information was. For something that effects so many people, teachers across the country, it sure was difficult to decipher concrete rules and regulations regarding fair use and copyright. The information, even on sites that I looked up on my own, was very legal and murky, almost more confusing than nothing at all.
I always figured that fair use and copyright and the like were less important for teachers. We use worksheets, and charts and information and movies for educational use in the classroom, and while most teachers have a "who's gunna know" mentality, it could still get us in trouble at some point and that is an important fact to remember.
I remember hearing about a teacher who was sued by Disney because she had a unit dedicated to Disney with her young elementary students. It made my skin crawl because I love using Disney in the classroom and I've done it many times! But I always assumed that showing or discussing a movie in the classroom would not be a big deal. I looked up the story and could find no proof that this actually happened, but it's still always made me think.
I wish I knew more about specific copyright law and fair use law. Like the deal with showing movies and using things solely in the classroom.

Making the movie in the classroom was a fun experience, but at the same time it was terribly stressful. It was really hard to get all the information we needed and all the scenes we wanted for it to make sense and also keep it under 2 minutes. Add to that fact that I hate seeing myself on video more than almost anything else in the world, and it made for quite a stressful day! But the movie filming option has always seemed like a good one for students, to me. It gives students a chance to be creative and find a fun way to learn. If students are having fun then they're going to absorb and retain more. Using video also gives them a larger range of education. Instead of just learning about, say, desert animals, they are also learning about video equipment, filming, computer programs, etc. Teachers just have to make sure the assignment is disgestable.

Week 10

Student created video projects information:


http://content.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=6758

This site is great because it's specifically a teacher's guide to making student movies. Scholastic is always a great site to work from and this article is exceptional in that capacity. A teacher who has actually done student video projects in her classroom gives step by step guides, examples and student handouts so other teachers can duplicate her success. There is a great list of resources and project ideas that give basically any information any teacher would need, including links to tutorials. So, even if a teacher has no idea what they are doing, they can figure it out before they have their kids do it. I would highly recommend this site for teachers doing video projects, in fact, I'm bookmarking it myself for future use!



http://www.needleworkspictures.com/ocr/blog/?p=220

This site focuses more on the "why" rather than the "how" of integrating student created video projects into the classroom. I think that this information is just as important as how to do it because there's no point in having students do something and neither the teacher nor the students knows why they are doing it, and to what end. There are five reasons explained in more detail: student engagement, student achievement, higher level thinking (ding ding ding!), media literacy, and closing the digital divide. It also talks of creating life long learners.


http://www.apple.com/education/digitalauthoring/ilife.html

This site is, obviously, slightly bias seeing as how it IS the Apple site talking about their own programs, but there is still good information there. This site discusses the new Apple iLife 08 which is suite of programs including iMovie, GarageBand, iWeb and iDVD. Apparently, iLife has tools which support the newest ISTE tech standards for students. They also have information on the Escondido Union Elementary School District, and how test scores have supposedly gone up with the use of iLife. I thought that was interesting since it's so close to home and it seemed to be "proof" that these type of student created projects actually help students on many levels.

Week 9

http://www.evalutech.sreb.org/criteria/index.asp

This site is great because it compiles a lot of information in one place for teachers to have easy access. A lot of the information provided proves to be helpful because the lists are things that we know but at any given moment would never be able to remember. Obviously, a teacher will think about things like appropriateness and potential uses, but maybe technical aspects would slip their minds. (Although after this class, technical aspects will never again slip my mind!) The range of materials described is also a plus, because while many teachers may easily be able to tell if a book or a video is appropriate and useful for the class, webportals, video disks and annotating courseware might be new ideas.
In the classroom, or as a teacher rather, this would useful in that it would concentrate all the information I need to be thinking about, sort of like making a "to-do" list of figuring out academic appropriateness. It gives hints and lists and even forms to fill out, like Kathy Schrock's evaluation form and the SIIA Checklist. This information would almost be more useful at a school or district level in order to evaluate components for whole schools rather than putting all the pressure towards teachers on an individual level. I suppose they already have a system similar to that in regards to a lot of their materials, but on a completely different note than this site, budget allowing, schools should pre-approve more materials for teachers to use so that when the time comes to use something teachers already have a good idea of what to use.

Week Eight

A large part of the semester helped me to better understand technology that I had previously been less than informed on. One such thing would be PowerPoint. While I could probably have eventually figured it out on my own, it was one of those things that I never used, and therefore never really thought about learning. Now it is a program that I better understand and would be able to adapt for classroom use, and quite possibly use on a regular basis myself.
Another useful program that we discovered this semester was Google Docs. I haven't yet to figure out exactly how I'll use this in the classroom with younger students, but I can certainly see how I would be able to use it to converse with other teachers, to work on lessons or letters or proposals (oh my!) of some sort. The whole thing, documents as well as presentations and graphs, is just such a novel concept, it would be a shame not to integrate it in some way or another.
Inspiration was a software that I had used once or twice, but I had actually only used the Kidspiration version and just for one very limited assignment. It was far more useful to dive deeper into what it can do and find out how to incorporate my own photos and how to actually use all the buttons available. In the classroom, I hope to be able to use a program like this because it will help students have a motivation to learn, in that, it's more fun! Bloom's Taxonomy was also an interesting thought process for me. A lot of it was stuff that I have already, unintentionally done just because it felt right, so it's nice to have a validation of sorts. The deeper level thinking is an important tool for students to discover, so the actual concept of Blooms may even be something I eventually bring to the classroom and explain, mildly, to the students so they know more about how they are getting their own learning.

Week Seven

Webquests turned out to be far less complex and difficult than I had originally imagined. The only examples I had seen were the permanent type where a huge website was created solely for the quest. So when we began the project I was in horror at the amount of work that would be required and especially how difficult it would be to do with a group in such a short period of time. But once we got working on it, things easily fell into place. Maybe our final outcome wasn't the be all end all of webquests, and was certainly a temporary quest, as opposed to a permanent one, but the process was similar and therefore extraordinarily helpful for the future. I think that this activity is one of the most versatile of all programs/activities we have engaged in this semester thus far. Students can create these quests for themselves, for other students or to prove their knowledge in an area. Teachers can create quests for students to learn new material or even to reiterate previously learned knowledge. A quest can be complex and be aimed at high school students, or be simple and aimed at elementary students. The varying levels of difficulty possible make this type of activity easily accessible for students at all grade levels and therefore make it an awesome tool for educators. After doing readings and looking at several examples of webquests, both good and bad, it was even more clear that as far as these quests go, anything goes and the more creativity involved, the better! It was a good experience actually creating one and gives a lot of insight for the future.

Week 6

I've had to work with spreadsheets on a very limited basis throughout work and schooling. Usually, it's been limited to just filling in boxes that already had formulas put in or just putting in a few pieces of information and making an easy little graph. But now, actually being able to know the formulas and having done a bit more research on ways to use spreadsheets for educational purposes, it seems that programs like Excel bring on a million new uses. It's amazing that I let something so simple and useful go by unused and unexplored, but now seems to be the perfect time to be learning stuff like this. For use in the classroom, spreadsheets would be amazing for stuff like attendance and grading, but also for assignments in pretty much any subject.
I guess I kind of assume that finding the appropriate information online isn't a tough deal. Sure, it might be hard to find what you're looking for, but I'm no Internet/computer genius and I'm generally able to get things done. Though thinking about it, and thinking about the tips in this weeks reading, I suppose I can see where students would have a tougher time. Should things go the way I want them too, I'll be working with lower elementary grades, so their use of the Internet will be even more limited, but a teenager may find it even more difficult to find what is true, accurate and useful. A story that always gets me: the daughter (5th grade?) of a professor here at CSUSM was doing a report on octopuses and she of course Googled octopus, and found a site, about 4th on the list, about the endangered tree octopus. Now of course, this is a fictional site, but it is put together very well, professional looking and very misleading, especially for a younger student who may or may not know any better. I suppose this just goes to show that all the things Caulfield and Symans discuss in their article in order to assist students in obtaining the proper information.

Week Five

I have come to absolutely enjoy PowerPoint. My first experience with it was this past summer, which is just strange to me, that I never used it during my undergrad or even high school. It's such a hugely helpful program both for being a student and being a teacher. In the classroom, there are infinite ways to use PowerPoint. Students can present ideas or projects, either to the class, the the teacher or to other classes. Teachers can use it to present/teach ideas and lessons to students, and make it available to them at any time. (i.e. place it on the class website). Presentation software can be used with any subject and at any grade level and therefore makes it even more useful for teachers and students.
Bloom's Taxonomy is something that I have heard of many times, but really never had a chance (or a reason, to be perfectly honest) to actually look into it. But upon closer inspection, it seems like it's just a fancy way of saying "make kids think about stuff rather than let them get away with surface junk." It's more like the ideal of what any good teacher should bring to the table: ask deep questions; stimulate prior and new knowledge; apply these practices to activities that support the idea. The site that really helped me out was http://tinyurl.com/b8ld2. It had a plethera of sample questions and ideas that could be realistically translated to the classroom. I take solace in the fact that I've used a number of these activities and questions in my experiences in the classroom because I feel like Bloom's is a great idea, and the fact that I have accidently begun to apply the principles feels good. If I can do that much before learning about it, I only hope that what I can later apply will be even more successful.

Week Four

I really enjoyed researching and learning about home to school communication tactics this week. From what I found online and from what people mentioned in the class discussion I was able to gather some excellent resources for my future classroom.
I had done some limited work with Kidspiration in the past but this new exposure to Inspiration was an interesting experience as things were organized a little differently. There seemed to be more choices and more "add ons" so to speak and it was obviously a more grown-up version of the program. I can see many obvious ways to use this program in the classroom, both for the upper and lower grades. You can also take the program and make it work in different ways for any number for different topics and lessons. Having the other free resources for mind maps will make a big difference in the classroom because it's something free for the teacher and they would be more easily accessible to students.
The activity from the reading (students visiting the creek and recording data) is something I a) probably wouldn't have thought of to begin with and b) truly would not have made the connection to create a mind map from the information. It's one of those amazing lessons that really connects to all students, as it touches on almost all the multiple intelligences and even brings technology into the mix. The steps and troubleshooting that the article mention touch on obvious problems that could occur in the process and it's important to remember that students will have these same problems and I, or teachers in general, need to be prepared to deal with these issues.

Week Three

I think the most useful thing I was introduced to this week was Rubistar. I'd heard of the program before and was already signed up for it, but I hadn't actually explored the site yet. But now that I see what the site actually encompasses, I believe it will be an asset for the classroom. Having just the template designed would almost be enough help in itself, but there is also so much information already put in there for individual assignments or in general. You can easily take a rubric that already exists and use just that, or you can add to it and mold it to make it fit your specifications. I will certainly use this program in the classroom anything to make my life a little easier! I can definitely have students create their own rubrics with it as well, either to use on someone else or for someone else to use on them.
I think students in my classroom may have experienced technology differently than me on either end of the spectrum. In some places, like the school I worked at previously, technology was not financially available to a large portion of the school, and therefore their technology, and especially computer use, was limited only to what we did in school and therefore I was the technological God to many students. On the flip side, the school where I work now, the average student has probably at least one computer at home, a cell phone better than mine in their backpacks, an iPod in their pocket and GPS in their cars, thus meaning that their technological experience is far above average. These students can't remember a time when they didn't have all these new, advanced piece of technology and so they count on them more than some. I can look back and remember a time when I didn't have a computer in the classroom for student use, when I didn't have one at home, when I didn't have a cell phone and a boom box with batteries was my only source of portable music. Students are just surrounded by technology at a much younger age and are therefore taking it for granted more than the generations before them. I think this changes learning because while it IS vital for them to learn new technologies and harness that power for good, it's also important for them to be able to survive without technology. And by that I mean, they should be able to handwrite, spell without a spell checker, save their friends numbers in a phone book in case their phone dies, do math without a calculator, etc.
A perfect example of this is found in this weeks reading:

“Now, when I make a mistake, I
don’t use an eraser or rewrite the
whole paper. My handwriting is
messy, but with the computer my
paper looks really nice.”
—1984, John, Grade 3, Apple2e
48K, Bank Street Writer
(page 4)

Once computers started to come along students began to give up on hand writing and just type everything. It makes me think about my own experience with writing. My younger brother and I are only three years apart and my mom always comments on how handwriting got lost somewhere right around his level in elementary school. In 3rd and 4th, and even some 2nd grades, I was taught handwriting, and cursive was a main focus but by the time my brother hit those same grades, only 3 years later, writing was no longer a focus and they began to do more typing. It was something I saw in 6th grade with an amazingly technologically inclined teacher, but to this day my brother can't write worth a lick because he was never TAUGHT how. I think it's turning around to some extent now, at least in the classrooms I have witnessed, but it's entirely individual based on the teacher.

Week 2

I can not believe the utter usefulness of the Google doc tools we learned about this week! Who knew all that amazing stuff was under my fingertips this whole time and I never knew. I don't currently have a word program on my laptop and I would have to email myself papers to print them out on the house computer but now with Google docs I have all that information saved for any place I need to access it. I've used the presentation and spreadsheet programs through Google as well and they work amazingly well. I'm just in awe of how helpful and perfect this program is! I also learned, after forever and ever of wondering in the back of my mind, what in the world bcc: meant on emails. Granted, if I had ever thought about it I'm sure I would have been able to find out what it meant, but finally that nagging question is answered.
The reading this week, "Teaching for Understanding"

Week One

This week I realized that I abhor starting a new school...especially when I have already graduated once and am now in this wierd limbo. I know noone, I don't know where anything is, I don't know the professors I don't know anything and that actually scares me. I feel like a freshman again, but worse. Aside from that, classes are actually interesting and it could be a good semester.

Evaluation of reading:

1. A teacher should able to send and receive e-mail and send attachments
Outlook Express in the Classroom, from Microsoft (very good): http://www.actden.com/oe
I enjoyed this site because it has both a teachers as well as a students point of view. The language is comical in places and uses the theme of aliens to grab the students attention. It's also a plus that there is a teacher's guide for using the website. I can see this being helpful in the classroom not only because it's something that the students could relate to and learn from but also because I'm not fully knowledable in the ways of Outlook and this program would help me teach it coherently.

3. A teacher should be comfortable with and be able to use Word Processing software on a regular basis.
Word Processing Tutorials for Word from the Educational Technology Center at Malaspina University: http://web.mala.bc.ca/etc/resourc/students/wordproc.htm
On this site there were actually a variety of links to access. This made it especially useful because from one place you could find many different solutions. I would see using this site in an upper level classroom (though by then I suppose most students should know most of this stuff) or just for own personal information to keep up with changes.

4. A teacher should be comfortable with and be able to use Spreadsheet software on a regular basis.
Software Tutorials, by ClassZone:
http://www.classzone.com/fun/tutorial/software.htm
This is another site where it is helpful to have many tutorials in the same place; your one stop shop for learning various kinds of technology. I think for this course it will be useful to do an update on technology that I may not have used for a while or may not have had much experience with. Tutorials like these, as others well, will help with new technologies I may encounter as well.

5. A teacher should be comfortable and be able to use Presentation software (PowerPoint and HyperStudio) on a regular basis.
HyperStudio Online Tutorial and Resources, by Building Learning with Technology
http://www.education.umd.edu/blt/hyper.html
This idea behind this site would have proved to be useful as I haven't been exposed to Hyperstudio in years. (if what I remember as being Hyperstudio actually was.) However, the site could have been put together a little better as the information was actually quite limited. The screenshots were a good addition to the tutorial, but the fact that they wanted you to have a copy of the manual with you seemed little asinine as it may actually be more useful for the reader to have all the information on screen at the same time.

6. A teacher should be able to understand the Windows Operating System for PCs or the OS Operating System for Macs. A teacher should be familiar with both the PC and the Mac.
A Beginner’s Guide to the Mac (These tips are shown using OS 8.6 and 9. Most will work with OS 8.1 and above): http://www.macoptions.com/os85
I only explored about the half the sections of the link but already it has proven to be a help. I have very little experience with using a Mac and any extra piece of information that I could gather will prove to be helpful. In the classroom, it would be useful in order to expose students to all kinds of operating systems. Most schools will have mainly PC or Mac, so helping them become used to both will help them be able to adapt.