New Tech Standards & Requirements

Technology standards within the classroom are important to know.  They are here to help us learn how to work quicker, simplify our lives, collaborate no matter the distance between people, create new ways to learn and make sense of things as well as to become critical thinkers (think outside the box).  Before taking this class, I had no idea how much I was missing out with my lack of familiarity with technology.  In a few short weeks I have seen and learned how technology will help make teaching more engaging, more enjoyable, and help to get the students more involved.

 

The first student education technology standard I found significant was the creativity and innovation.  I think this is a huge goal even if you do not have technology in your classroom.  The technology is able to take this piece to a whole new level.  Students are able to take what they already know and with the use of technology are able to gain deeper information, new insights, and are able to create new pieces of work all together.  Students will be able to express themselves and ideas through various types of presenting information, show what they created through their data, and are able to attach/connect various websites to help clarify ideas or materials if need be.  Technology is an endless way for student to create and innovate.  It is always updating and changing so there is no stopping what my future students will be able to come up with the use of it in the classroom. 

Next is the communication and collaboration standard.  I know myself and most students love to talk and share ideas.  Technology allows everyone to take this to a whole new level.  Now if I am doing a lesson about Africa, my students can actually talk and collaborate with people who live in Africa through the use of technology.  We could talk to anyone in the world, communicate with anyone and instantly find out what is happening at any given point of time.  It is quite fascinating.  I think a fun class project would be to work with another school on a group project that is in another country and collaborate and communicate through the use of the internet.  It would be amazing to see both points of view and what the students could come up with.  The students would get a firsthand look of global issues and quickly see how technology can help us be connected with the entire globe. 

The last standard I chose to talk about is research and information fluency.  Now you can do research the old fashion way but how boring and you are quite limited.  Technology opens up so many doors.  The information you can get on a research report is endless.  You can go as deep on the subject as you want.   In seconds you are able to gather a plethora of information, decide if it is valid and useful.  You can smoothly organize all your information to help you to accurately evaluate, analyze, and summarize all your findings.  I think this is a tremendous help with students.  Research can seem like a headache but with a click of a few buttons on your computer or phone, you can have all your information in one place or in certain folders.  It is up to you how to store your information in the easiest way for you to understand and access.  Students will use this standard when learning about any subject.  It is endless.  You could be learning about other countries or even how the city you lived was formed.  It is a great interactive outlet for students to gather information without the annoyance of not knowing how to store it.    

All of this is amazing but without knowing about possible hurdles and how to overcome may give this little value.  First challenge would be your school does not have any computers or Wi-Fi for that matter.  I think you could talk to the school about putting Wi-Fi into the budget and say you could bring in your own computer.  I think in order for this to work you would need to prove and show how much student growth you can gain with technology.  I would bring in a list of different tools and projects I could do with the students and how easy it would be as well as covering all the same standards but in a more engaging manner.  Schools are going to want to see your clear ideas and data on technology helping students.  I would come fully prepared with all of this information including statistics and graphs.  

Student test scores (spreadsheet and graph)

This blog is referring to me taking raw data and creating a specific spreadsheet as well as a graph that represents the data. This was probably more challenging for me than it should have been. With that being said, I am glad I spent so much time on it trying to figure out how to calculate the specific averages for students and for overall test scores. I have to admit it was a lot more fun than I would have imagined. Once I got the hang of selecting the right cells to calculate the average it was fun.

I can see that the more I become familiar with this, the easier it will be to use. To make it easier for me, I opened up three different Google doc spreadsheets. I first put the overall raw data into the first spreadsheet. From there, I was able to copy and paste the students names to a new spreadsheet followed by their tests 6-10 and disregarded tests 1-5. This second spreadsheet was where I calculated the individual students averages, the tests overall averages, and the class average as a whole. I copied and pasted all the students who had below the class average of 192 to my third spreadsheet. From here, I was able to create my graph. I was pleasantly surprised how adding color can help the spreadsheet to come alive and make more since. It helps me to see it in individual categories but at the same time all making since.

It took me a few tries before I had the graph labeled correctly and to come out just right. I love how you can go back if you do not like how it turned out and try again. This is definitely user friendly. I can see using this for my classroom’s grades. It will be easy for me to see which of my students need more assistance and which of my students need extensions to help challenge them. I think this will make my teaching life much easier. I want to keep practicing with it so that I can get the hang of it and it won’t take me much time to find my class’s data.

Once I graphed my data I quickly saw that all but one student had their highest score during test ten. I would say on average the students improved with every test they took. By test 10, half of the students are exceeding the average. As a teacher, if I saw this data, I would be very happy. Growth is always the goal. I would look at their lower test scores and find out what content I need to go over in more detail and teach it in a different way.

Multi-Media Project

     Ustream is a site where you can do free live recording.  You are able to videotape with audio right from your computer or phone.  You are able to do video streams online where anyone can watch.  Once you are on live others are able to chat with you and you can have a dialogue.  A great example of Ustream is: recording sports and allowing it to immediately be viewable online.  You are also able to record an interview.  You are able to stream anything you’d like, some people do animals, and others do news and events that are taking place.  Ultimately it is your choice what you would like to stream. 

     It reminds me in some ways of twitter because once you find out when someone is doing a live stream you are able to follow them. You just have to know when they are doing a stream or on what to be able to search for it. 

     We discussed some great ways to use Ustream in class.  One that caught my attention was going around with a laptop and recording the students as they are working on a project and then have them talk into the computer to explain what they are doing and any thoughts or opinions they may have.  This is a great way to get students more involved as well as allow their parents and family to get an inside look of what is going inside of the classroom.  Students could also do interviews with each other on different subjects with this.  Book reports could be fun, show the book and then talk about what it was about, questions you have, predictions as you went through, and how you would retell the ending.  There are endless things you could do with this tool.  The best part is that it is no extra cost.  Also, instead of taking the time to organize or write everything students did you can just record them in the act and record their responses.  This makes instant assessment that is concrete without having to take the time to write down every word. 

Here is a YouTube video that shows how to sign up and a little more of what it is all about:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPZXkvl8cT0

Live video from your Android device on Ustream

My favorite web2.0 tools

Component 1:

     Webopedia states “web 2.0 is the term given to describing a second generation of the World Wide Web that is focused on the ability for people to collaborate and share information online.  Web 2.0 basically refers to the transition from static HTML Web pages to more dynamic Web that is more organized and is based on serving Web application users”. 

      To me, web 2.0 seems like the internet but allows you to group your information into areas and look up a lot of different pages about your topic at one time.  Others are able to share and respond to whatever you put out there on the web.  It also seems that if you right click on a word or tab you have more precise options to get more information on your topic.  It definitely seems like it is trying to make gathering and finding information easier.  Here is a link to a YouTube video that explains it well too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE. Another link of how to use it in the school:  http://www.web20atschool.net/web/.  Examples of how to use it are: if you have a page open and you want to place it with another page you can just drag it over and they are connected, and you can create blogs where anyone can respond, add information, and share information. 

Component 2:

      Delicious is a site where you can store your favorite WebPages/sites.  You can save your site and then write your own thoughts.  It can have your documentaries, YouTube pages, and any site that interests you.  They are all in a place where you can easily find them.  It allows you to keep all your sites in a “stack” to where they are all on a page one section after another, you are able to share your information and find deeper depth on your topics.  You save whatever you want using your delicious toolbar.  You just copy and paste the URL and add descriptions and tags to help you find them easily.  If you want everyone to see you just hit publish. 

     I signed up with Delicious and decided to do a stack about the rainforest: http://www.delicious.com/amynugent.  Through this I discovered how easy it is to use. It prompts you to move the “save to delicious” icon to your browser so that no matter what site you travel to you just click on that button and it automatically saves to your site.  This would make projects a whole lot easier.  You are able to store all your information in one location, making it easy to flip through.  Also, since it’s on the web you can access it from any computer at any time.  I think this is a great tool for students to use doing group projects.  They could all find information and place it into their delicious site and sort through it together.  It is a simplified book of all the information you want.  By being able to describe every site, allows it to be even easier to use and find the information you put into the site.  Here is a site that gives you some information about delicious: http://blog.delicious.com/.  I am having a hard time finding peoples testimonials about Delicious. The main site is: www.delicious.com which helps you to set up and learn how to use it.  I found it to be particularly user friendly. 

Google docs "Forms" group project

My group is working on finding out about Google forms.  I am on the far scale of not knowing much about what technology has to offer.  I am slowly learning   more and becoming more impressed.  I contributed by searching as much basic information as I could find about what Google forms is and have to offer. I wrote notes down under section one of our group document.  I also contributed one of our survey questions about “what is your favorite park in Salem, OR”. 

     I had no idea that Google forms was such a simple way to get data on a survey, questionnaire, or even use it for an expense spreadsheet.  I think what I love best about it is how user friendly it is.  All you have to do is open up a new Form that is located inside of your documents home page found on the Google website.  I think it is fun that you can make it your own.  For example: our questionnaire is about favorite places in Salem, OR.  All that we have to do is put that as our title and then start adding our questions followed by how we want people to answer them and our answer options.  We have the option of putting it in any order, adding questions, or deleting questions. 

     What makes it open ended is the fact that after you create your survey or questionnaire it automatically creates a spreadsheet.  The spreadsheet has your questions at the top and below the answers to the questions.  It then starts creating data for you.  You do not have to go in manually and enter everyone’s response.  This saves you large amounts of time and allows you to instantly see how people are responding.  I could see the spreadsheet helping your students who were in math groups working on a project that has to do with percents and productivity.  It could be a really fun tool for them to collect data from their classmates.  I think you could simplify this to work even with second graders.  It would save large amounts of time to where you just enter your questions and then as students answer you would instantly be able to see results.  Students could use this with reports about various topics and enter data/information about what they are studying. 

     As a future teacher, I think I could easily implement this into my classroom.  I could use it as a tool to see where my students are and allow them to do projects using it.  I think it will save time and energy as well as help keep my students engaged and have fun working with each other.  I could see this as being a great way to implement technology into my classroom without having to spend lots of money or getting a grant. Survey below:
http://tinyurl.com/4yj9quu


Our Document: http://tinyurl.com/3tpqo66

OTEN Conference

This is a reflection of going to the OTEN Conference.  The keynote speaker was very engaging.  As he talked, I could see the passion he had for the students.  His big focus was innovation in the classroom through technology grants.  I was pleased to find out that teachers can receive $2000 in grants for any type of technology.  I was most interested in what teachers are using the ipad nanno’s for.  Nanno’s are helping student’s reading fluency.  They are able to hear their voice and then practice and correct errors.  It also allows students to look up words, find out what they mean and how to pronounce them.  Students are able to work on math projects together-guess, check, and refine.  They are able to put books on ipads so now younger siblings are getting exposed to books.  I think one of my favorite things is how it is helping non-readers become good readers who are not afraid to read aloud.

     Next, I went to a work session called “Infusing the three R’s”.  It reminded me of a PowerPoint but much more open ended and expressive.  It allows you to present information using Bloom’s Taxonomy.  It is up to you how you want to display information.  You can do it in a bubble format and then have all the bubbles connect.  If you click on a category it can take you to another page full of information on that topic. 

    She also talked about doing pre-tests to see where students are at so that you can have a better understanding of where to teach your students.  Students can have their own clicker through their phone and answer questions throughout the lesson.  She also talked about using Dropbox to save all information virtually.  This was the first time I have heard of this and now I think I am going to be using this tool often.

     The last session I went to was on podcasting in the elementary classroom.  The teacher used her computer to download the student’s work and made a class website to show the students and their families.  The student would read their information into the podcast that had a velkin recorder (which the teacher said was a key feature you need).  Her third graders did a research report on endangered animals and each student recorded their own report about a specific animal.   It’s a great tool for students to learn how to use technology.  The teacher was also able to record the students as well.  I thought this seemed doable and a great way to engage a class in all the subjects.  She should use her class’s projects and I was impressed with the engagement and knowledge the students were able to have.

     I felt very lucky that I was able to go to the OTEN Conference.  I now have a lot of information that I can take when I have my own classroom.
 ( Here is my Yodio)

Blog 2

This is my first time blogging but I know it has been around for quite some time.  Recently at the OTEN conference, a teacher was talking about using iPods to record students reading a report that they had created.  This made me think that you could add this to your class blog and the families would be able to watch their children.  The students would also be able to blog about their experience.  They could share questions, ideas and their thoughts.  Other students would be able to comment and reply.  Making this a great way for students to be engaged and be able to see what other students are thinking.  I love the idea of allowing the parents the access to our class blog.  They would know what we were working on as well as get to see what their child is writing in the moment. 

      The students could be working on a health program of being more active and eating a varied diet.  A blog could be a great way for students to post their process.  It could be in as much detail as what they ate that day and all their daily activities.  I think this could be fun for the students to be able to share and be able to get ideas from their classmates.  For example: what are some good activities they can do to move around when it is rainy out or simple foods to eat that are better than having a cookie for a snack.  I could also comment and encourage higher level thinking. 

     Other simplified ideas would be it could replace the student’s journals. This would eliminate paper and that would always be backed up on the computer so the students would not be able to use the excuse that they lost their response.  After reading groups, students could blog their ideas, questions, predictions and thoughts about the story.  As they go through the story they would be able to add new ideas and answer their questions.  If a teacher wanted to put a little time into setting up and how he/she wants blogging to work with the students it could be a great resource for the students to use.