Thing #21 - Capstone

A. Many of these tools have helped me improve my teaching and delivery methods.  Several of the tools, Prezi and the mind maps have helped me organize my lessons to emphasise the most important areas.  Prezi, Jing, Wordle, and Photo Story have improved my delivery options.  Google Docs, RubiStar, Google forms, and graphic organizeers give me ways to communicate and collaborate with students.  Other tools have increased my abilbity to network with other professionals and find ways to stay updated on technology tools and programs.  All of these options also have the abiltiy to give the students and teachers I work with more choices for projects, increases their opportunity to use online tools, and find support to succeed on their projects. A diversified tool box creates more diversified lessons.

B. The technology applications that I am including in my lessons and incorporating into future lessons witll support a variety of the Marzano stategies.  Organizers will help students utilize questions and cues, online researching presentation tools will help students test hypothesese, set objectives and provide feedback, allow for non-linguistic representations and reinforce homework, notetaking and summarizing.   Mindmaps, presentation tools and online study tools will increase value in homework and allow students to build understanding of similarities adn differences.

C. I plan to use Bubbl.us with our health classes for stress management.  I would like to have the students work in groups to create charts with how they react to stress and how they can better deal with stress.  This project would support health standards - Strand 4 - Social and emotion health.  Technology standards and could hit all the main areas of the NETS for students:

• Demonstrate creativity and innovation
• Communicate and collaborate
• Conduct research and use information
• Think critically, solve problems, and make decisions
• Use technology effectively and productively

Thing #21

I learned about Jing from another presentation that Ron gave and have been using it for a little over a year but this class really made me think of more ways to use the tool.  I'm working on saving more of my class presentations so that students can review the sections they need to review or students can use the presentations for makeup.  There are several lesson I do in the library that students are graded on and if students could make them up using the videos it would make it easier for the classroom teacher that I work with on the project and myself. 
Currently I have a link to a short video on how to use our Destiny library catalog on my library home page.  During this class I added a short video for editing in Windows Movie Maker towards the bottom of the Advertising Project web page.  Because of limited space though I plan to link to other videos for this project at screen cast, I already have one on editing a google web page loaded and will add the link to the project web page along with other videos that I have created and need to finish editing.  I did get feedback from students on the first videos I did and I made improvements.  Students asked me to cover certain features such as changing the back ground colors so I did add those steps.  The comments on my current versions include the fact that I stuttered on the movie maker video and then on the google site one I talked about a page, they would prefer that I clarify and say web page and use another color when I did the example with the frames so that it would be easier to see.  They would also like me to have a video on editing their pictures online.  The reviews from the students are helpful, they help me to understand what steps need to be clarified for them and what steps they would like more information on.  The videos are most helpful for the students that haven't used the programs before and need support when using the programs.

Thing #20

I liked both Gliffy and Bubbl.us.  I liked the fact that I could just go to the web site and start using the tools, no signup required.  That means I could have students do quick projects using these tools without the hassle of creating accounts.  Students could use this as presentations or tools to display information in a presentation.  They could use them as individuals or as group work.  Both tools could be used to help organize and plan projects or ways to display their understanding of the topics. Both are visual tools that can help the visual learner and give teachers another tool for presentations.  Wordly and Tagxedo can be used as part of presentations, ways to review subjects or ways to study student terms.  They could also be used to highlight important topics such as a way to summarize or review topics.  I have had students use wordle to study spelling words.

I really like the way you can save from Tagxedo and choose the formats, that is a big bonus over Wordle.  Both are fun tools though.

Thing #19

Thing 19

1 -Plan to extend my classroom. 

I have been working on extending the reach of the Freshman Library since I started over 10 years ago, extending is a work in progress with the tools and opportunities changing and improving.  Because of this class I plan to reach a little farther, try some activities again with new tools, and speed up some of my plans. 

I will continue to put my handouts on project web pages but I am increasing my use of videos for directions.  In the past I have had some videos available at school for video, audio projects and directions for the library catalog but I’m now adding more videos for directions to classes that I lead in the library.  I’m working on creating the videos to cover library orientation and the citation class that goes along with orientation.  I’m also using Jing and screen cast to house and link to the videos so that students can access them from home.  Posting more online will allow students to work on their own at school or from home.  The videos of our online classes reminded me of the importance for students to be able to review information, even after attending an online class I have found it useful to scan back through the posted video.

Creating the videos improves my teaching by forcing me to be really organized and consider carefully what I want to cover, say and show to students.

I have also increased my use of and a few of my teacher’s use of Google Docs with students, I plan to increase the use of Google Docs.  I am working with teachers to help them use it to improve projects and make it more effective for them to keep track of the students work.

The different lessons and activities that are being posted online give the students the opportunity to work on and create their projects more at their own speed, giving the students different tools and approaches to use to successfully complete their projects.  Using tools like Google Docs increasing communication and collaboration. Creating activities that use different resources increases  opportunity to learn and use new resources and adapt to the new tools available.  Helping students learn to use new tools hopefully increases their opportunity to learn how to learn and adapt on their own to the changing electronic world.

The more tools I use and post for students the more the staff I work with will try.  If I can show how online tools help me and the students, more teachers are willing to give new tools a try.

2- Navigating the Land of Online Learning.

Students will need to make sure they understand the requirements of the class they take, that they can schedule time to work online and can seek technical support when needed.  Students will need to be motivated to work on their own and be mature enough to understand the responsibilities of online class work.

Thing 18

I've used several different tools over the years and at home I use Netvibes.  I like using Netvibes because I can add tabs, so I have a page for my husband and for other things besides my favorite "home" page.  I can easily edit for different sources and rearrange.  I use the RSS feeds and twitter box so that I can glance at the newest events and posts, I have Cnn so I can be aware of what is happening and I have links to the web pages I use the most or need to keep handy for work.  Rss and other tools adapt the information layout and information we have quick access to and can help us stay up to date on information, discussions and resources that support learning and teaching.  Schools and teachers can use RSS feeds to share school and class information, students could use RSS to create and update projects they are working on and use the feed capabilities to keep teachers and classmates informed.  There are so many resources available that it is impossible to keep up at all without Rss feed aggregators and even then you can only follow a limited number compared to the infinite resources available. 

Thing 17

I chose to compare Info Trac Junior to Info Trac Student. Both are good databases that I recommend to my students. Using some of the same health topics that our students look up for health I compared the two databases. On my of the topics like teen smoking, Info Trac Student returned more hits, included higher reading levels and a larger selection of sources. I would assume this is because the Junior is geared more and filtered more for middle school audiences. Both have the ability to read the article for students which is useful and both have a good citation tool available which is helpful. The sources are published resources some more well known then others and some that are in the Student version might require students to check out the appropriateness of the source. Just because it is published doesn't always mean its right or credible, it just means we know who the author is and who is taking responsibility for the information.

Academic OneFile - 40,632,752, General OneFile - 99,812,347  Educators 7,885,112.  All three of the databases have a variety of resources written at a higher reading level.  All three include common resources along with professional journals and magazines written for specific fields.  General One File has over twice as many articles as Academic and Educators Resource has even less than Academic.  All three let you search for full text, images and peer reviewed articles, something that is useful for higher level research.  All three are updated daily.  There are many areas that overlap but not all and I would recommend searching all three for topics.

All the databases I looked at were easy to search, very similar to the search engines that students use. They also have advanced search options and search history, the ability to mark and retrieve articles.  They also have features to send the articles as email, print, download, and save as mp3. You can also have the articles translated.

Citation - 1

I recommend using the citation tools, when ever available (not all databases have the citation too.)  I use MLA 7 which means the URL is optional.  With my students I tell them that since I need to log into the database to get back to the article, the URL is optional.  

Ault, Alicia. "Smoking Rates in Teens Show a Leveling Off." Pediatric News 44.10 (2010): 31. General OneFile. Web. 5 Dec. 2010.

Citation - 2

Spasov, Peter B., Jason Apple, Champ Davis, Christoper Page, and Melissa Harcom. "Dealmakers' Almanac; Market Observers Break Out Their Crystal Balls to Forecast What the New Year Will Bring." Mergers & Acquisitions: The Dealmaker's Journal1 Dec. 2010: 42. General One File. Web. 5 Dec. 2010.

No matter which tools you use I tell students they still need to edit for capitals and remember that garbage in means garbage out.  You still need to know which information to enter where and what needs to be entered.  The tools are definitely helpful and make citations for teachers and students easier.  

Just for fun

Thing #16

1. LearnPort has some interesting options and lots of classes to investigate.  Some are short little tutorials.  I was hoping to finds some on Office 2010 products but I didn't find any that new so I will have to check back.  I can see that they are trying to develop online professional development tools to fit the future teacher requirements.

2. Twitter, Facebook and other social sites can make staying updated on activities and information easy.  Both are easy to use and can be used to stay up to date and communicate with personal friends, families and groups.  The trick both in our personal lives and in our professional lives is to be aware of what we are posting, remembering that once posted we lose control over the item and it is no longer private.  We also have to remember the whole audience, mixing students, parents and personal items leave opportunities for inappropriate items becoming visible to the wrong group and for items to be taken out of context.  The tools show promise for communication if set up carefully.

 Using twitter or online sites to alert students and parents to due dates, activities, and important information could be an effective tool but only if everyone participates, if not everyone participates then it becomes one more responsibility for the teacher. Right now our teachers are required to keep their homework updated on the school access website but they also need to keep notes in other places too, they may be required to e-mail parents but since not all parents have signed up for e-mail they need to follow up in other ways too.  If we could use one tool for everyone this would be helpful, adding another tool that just adds one more task is not a benefit at this time.

Many of the tools could be used for publishing class projects and give students the opportunity to be publishers and share their skills, knowledge, presentations.

3. I did create an account in MaculSpace and am waiting to hear back on my account.  In the mean time I was checking out other resources, some of it reminds me of a list serve, a place where professionals and share ideas and information.  Then there are the links to videos of interest on the topics.  I notice a lot of resources that can be useful - one way to stay up on technology when I'm done with this class.  (Which is really going to take me a long time because I haven't really had a chance to check out all of the resources listed - and Ron keeps showing us more.)

4.  Professional organization:  I’m a member of MAME Michigan Association of Media Educators,  it cost me $50 a year.  The purpose is to help support media specialist and library staff in Michigan to encourage professional growth and to promote libraries.  The group offers online information, conferences and workshops.  I get to participate in an online professional list serve where we share information and find support.   The web site also has a host of useful information.  I contribute my technical skills, share lesson plans, and discuss ideas to support other library staff across the state.  Together we help keep each other updated, find information and tools and create a professional network.  In the past I have participated in local and state committees and volunteered at our state conferences.  Which reminds me, it is that time of year to renew my membership, better get my check in the mail.  There are so few of us left, they might actually notice one less member.