Thing 6

WEB SITE EVALUATION
Buy an Ancestor   http://www.fulkerson.org/ancestors/buyanancestor.html

The site claims to be selling family tree/ancestors but there is  no  real content available at this website. The ads on the right side are made up and have no links. The humorous and sarcastic text on the page are a big clue about the purpose of the site. The town listed as the location no longer exists.  No author is listed and the “about” link doesn’t take you to any other information. The website company is named Losing Proposition Company copy right through   2012.  The multiple colors used on the text,  poor layout and icons for other companies that don’t actually link to anything are more clues and just in case the website doesn’t give you enough clues the link to the site reviews will make it clear. 

Killer Tornado http://www.cimms.ou.edu/~doswell/Conference_papers/SELS96/WoO.html

This one was fun to look at, at first glance it is merely a word document, a report posted online.  Clicking on one of the author’s names at the top, takes you to Harold E. Brooks, who does work for the government doing weather research.  But a quick look at the name of the website that comes up at the address shows you that they named the site “Dorothy & Toto” and the web address is posted at an educational server but it is a personal page, note the ~ in the link.  Reading the text of the document you find that it doesn’t really contain any useful information and then when you click on the images that are included you start to get the serious clues that they footage that Metro-Golwyn-Mayer provided them with is refereeing to one of my favorite childhood movies “The Wizard of Oz.”

LESSON PLANS FOR DIGITAL BEHAVIORS

1.        I plan to create a presentation about the basic rules of Netiquette.  This presentation will be designed to quickly review online behaviors and will be used with the classes when we first start working on our blogs or working with our students in a listserve. 

Basic Rules for students:

·         If you wouldn’t say it to their face don’t say it online

·         Pay attention to where you are and what the expectations are

·         Remember everything online can be traced back to you, be careful what you say and how you say it

·         Careful what pictures and information you share online

·         Be careful about what you share about other peoplr

·         Other students and people will be viewing your material, remember to do your best

2.        I already do a presentation with the students on digital issues, it started years ago as Internet Safety but the presentation changes as the students’  use and technology changes.  I will be updating the section on Cyber bulling using the video at: http://www.digizen.org/cyberbullying/fullFilm.aspx and updating statistics using the report from i-SAFE America Surveys from 2003-2005.

I will also be updating the section of the presentation on digital behaviors to discuss even more of what students are doing with their cell phones, using information on applications that track us such as Foursquare and sites like Mocospace.  I will also be using a clip I came across while working on this class at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGkaw44-Ql4 that shows how we lose control when we forward and share personal images with cell phones, not  just online.





Thing 5 -

Differnetiated Learning - Many of the key elements in the guide for differentiation are already incorporated into most of the activities that we do in the media center at varying levels.  The teachers I work with and myself are always trying to improve the lessons and increase student involvement and choices, some topics are easier to do this with than others.  We use a variety of methods to introduce and explain topics, our lessons are align with our learning goals, we group students differently for different activities and try to allow choice whenever possible.  We spend time explain key concepts as class and to individuals, we encourage students to explain to each other and offer different views and ideas. We assess and adjust assignments while we are working on them, offering more directions or clarifying if needed and changing end products when that is needed. 
I would list the following as commonly used elements that we continue to try to improve on:

·         Several elements and materials are used to support instructional content.

·         Align tasks and objectives to learning goals.

·         Instruction is concept-focused and principle-driven.

·         Flexible grouping is consistently used.

·         Clarify key concepts and generalizations.

·         Initial and on-going assessment of student readiness and growth are essential.

·         Vary expectations and requirements for student responses.

Some key elements are often incorporated are but are more difficult to include, activities that  would make these more common have been eliminated due to time constraint on trimesters.  Often time I feel we have cut out the activities that would allow students to evaluate themselves and take time to learn skills from the activity and not just the required information.  Getting students to take an active role in their education and engaging students in all the lessons can be difficult on a time line.  Adapting ways to quickly include these in lessons is an ongoing goal.

·         Use assessment as a teaching tool to extend rather than merely measure instruction.

·         Emphasize critical and creative thinking as a goal in lesson design.

·         Students are active and responsible explorers.

Diverse Learning - Several sections highlight ideas that can easily be used with any student to improve the students’ experience.  Improving digital text and the audio sections suggest ways for students with visual and learning disabilities to easily use technology.  Simple steps such as making the text larger, the ability to highlight, and text to voice help reading and writing.  The webpages with links to digital books, audio books, and tools for enhancing text .  The great thing is that these tools can be used to help any of our learners not just students that qualify for the extra help.  These tools can help be shown to students as resources, simply showing a class how to enlarge the text on a webpage or digital document will help many of our visually impaired students quickly without singling them out.  Teaching students to highlight text will benefit all of our students.  Audio books work for struggling readers, visually impaired, and English as a second language.  

UDL - NetTrekker

Nettrekker makes it easy to find reviewed resources that include summaries and reading levels so that I can sort through and find the most appropriate sources quickly.  I like being able to see a reading level.   When I put sources together for students, I like to include a variety of sources to make sure I cover the information the students need and have the information in a format that they can use.  I like to include different reading levels and visual tools.

I wish I could have students log in to Nettrekker so they could use it to search and so that they could use the Read Aloud tool. 

Text-to-Audio Conversion Assignment

 Very Cool.  I think I will start including a link to this tool on all of my web pages.  I post my notes and handouts on the webpages with the resources for projects.  If I had a link to Vozme, students will be able to highlight and have directions read to them and have sections of the webpages read.  While we always go over directions as a class, many students need to review the directions as they are working, this could help many of the students that need extra help and time to understand the directions.  By putting a link on my library pages students could also have easy access to the webpage for other assignments.  Many students need to “chunk” the directions, this would enable them to do that without asking for the directions to be read again.  I also like the idea that the file could be saved.  This does give me the idea though that maybe I should include an audio of the directions right on the webpage to begin with.

Thing 4 Thinkfinity

Hero’s Journey is an online writing activity, that walks students through the character development of a Greek Hero.

http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/student-interactives/hero-journey-30069.html

This will work well with our English classes to incorporate writing into their study of the Greek  literature.  The writing process in this activity will help students understand the characteristics of a Greek hero and could even be used to create a modern day epic.  Since our classes are on trimesters this interactive, quick write activity will be prefect as an introduction to the section or a review of the section.

Twenty-First Century Informational Literacy: Integrating Research Techniques and Technology - Works to improve and develop student's research skills and integrates technology in the research and in the presentation.  Students create graphic novels instead of writen or oral reports.

http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/twenty-first-century-informational-30581.html?tab=4#tabs

This research project is set up for the student to present their information in graphic novel format.  I like this project for several reasons.  One, the research steps are well organized, two students will find it hard to plagiarize and most of the students will enjoy the new format.  This activity allows students to use technology for the research but to also present the information in a creative way.  Activities like this improve technology skills while building research skills.  One problem I see in my district is coming up with the program or software to create the graphic novel.

Thing 3 - Skype

Okay so not my best picture, there is a good reason to turn off the camera at times.  My daughter and I both have new computers and  we are still playing with our settings so setting up skype on the new computers and making sure the cameras and mics work was good for both of us. 

Skype has a lot of potential for classrooms.  Skype is a great way for classes to communicate with experts in different fields.   Skype could also be used to keep traveling students updated on classwork and traveling students to share their tri. Why not have a student in class keep the traveling student updated or how about homebound and students sick at home.  Skype field trips could be used for a lot of different activities from geography, history, and social studies.  We could connect with community members and get updates on local issues and activities, students could discuss a variety of topics on local politics.  Skype in with our political leaders, business leaders, or colleges to let students get actively involved, without leaving the classroom.

Thing 2 - Collaboration

Google templates has a variety of documents that I can save to my folder then edit to fit my needs.  This saves me time two ways.  First there are some ideas and formats of ways to use Gooogle Docs that I hadn’t thought of and second I can save time by using a document close to my needs and only make a few adjustments.  Google docs is a resource for materials and ideas for students and myself.

I love working with others on Google Docs, it is a great way to work on documents together, proof read for each other and to just plain share documents in a format that can easily be adjusted to fit individual needs.

I'm checking out Buzzword too and plan do see how it handles adding screen shots and notes.  Google docs doesn't work well for me on larger documents where I have a lot of screenshots added.  I would really like to be able to share my handouts with images with my teams so that we can make corrections as a team.  More of this as I work with it this week at school (assuming I'm not blocked.)

Thing 1- Delicious

Here's my link to Delicious http://www.delicious.com/kblunt

I've used Delicious before so for this assignment I looked up my log in and password information and started looking at this application again.  I promised myself I would use this app during this class - problem all my computers are set up for Diigo from my tool bar, so every time I turn around I've add something new to my Diigo account instead.  So first step, set myself up for Delicious, second step hide Diigo for this project.  I do like the way Delicious let you see how many other people find the source useful. The comments that other people add can be very helpful for evaluating the websites.

Whether it’s Diigo or Delicious both save me time and headaches for organizing bookmarks so that I can have access from any computer.  At school I use two different computers and may be on someone else’s computer to help them.  At home I have three available to me. Online bookmaking is a stress reduction tool.  Tagging is great for looking for sites that I haven’t used in a while or heard about and didn’t use right away.  Without tagging I wouldn’t be able to find my online treasures as quickly.

Added note:  After using Delicious for a few days I'm going back to Diigo, I like Diigo because I can add highlights to the web pages, the highlights show up in my bookmarks and on the webpage when I go back to view it.  I'll use Delicious to look for and sort through websites but I'm sticking with Diigo for most of my use.

Thing 1-short cuts

I have two screen shots here the top one is using Shift+tab to arrange bullet points, this is a new short cut for me and one that will save me time because it seems I'm always spending time getting my points to line up.  Shift + enter, to start a new paragraph when I'm using bullets is great, no more "arguing" with Word auto formatting.

The second screen shot is from trying to use the trick of entering lines by using the symbol 3 times then hitting enter - that doesn't work on my Office 2010 version but what did work that is helpful is using the underscore tool and then tabbing across the screen.  Since I make a lot of forms this is going to be another time saver.

Other short cuts I intend to start using:

F1 for help, I often use the help features in programs, I use a lot of different programs both Mac and Pc so I may know that I can do something but not remember exactly how to do it.

F7 for spell check, not new to me but one I had forgetten.

F5 for refresh

Any tools that save me time and make it easier to get my work done are great, tools that work for me can also be shared with staff and students to make their work easier too.  Students like to share shortcuts with me and are impressed when I have something useful to give the. 

New favorites that I just found this morning from the computer hope web page for Windows 7:
Winkey + D brings my desktop to the top of everythng
Winkey + left arrow, right arrow, top arrow and down arrow all let me arrange and resize open windows - love it.

Thing #0

A good blog is going to depend on the intended audience.  If the blog meets the interests and needs of the intended audience then blog should be considered good.  I could read a blog intended for the text messaging crowd and be totally annoyed with the grammar and the spelling but I’m not meant to be on the jury.  Blogs make it easy for anyone to publish so it is possible for blogs to cover unique ideas that fit the needs of small groups of individuals spread out over a wide area.  Blogging allows self-publishing but also allows feedback and ratings by the audience.

Students, teachers, principals and other school groups can and do use blogs for a variety of educational uses.  Communication and team work are basic uses, creative writing and publishing for students are a couple more.  Many lesson plans, classroom websites, and school committees work well using blogs.  Easy to publish, built in communication tools and free resources make blogs a good resource. 

21 Things – Getting Started

I'm looking forward to this class as it will force me to take the time to explore new techniques, websites, applications and a chance to discuss technology issues with other educators.  I'm hoping to learn about new tools that I can use with the students and teachers to enchance their classes.  Using online tools for classwork and other online collaboration tools are a couple more of my goals.  If this class helps me stay ahead of teachers and most of the students I work with, I will consider the class a success.