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CEDU 534 Week 4

Social Bookmarking seems like yet another way of connecting to people about information and content. As far as application to the classroom, this one seems more applicable to teachers in the classroom and to a lesser extent to students. Teachers can really benefit from peer to peer collaboration. I know that I've always benefited from this collaboration.

Over the last couple of weeks I've had an idea that I think would be a good one. Any school district (mine for example) could spend one inservice day hooking up all of their teachers in a social networking site of some kind. They could pitch it as fun and entertaining - posting pictures and at the same time posting cool lesson plans that they've done and evaluations about them. In addition to this why not give all of their teachers an account on a social bookmarking site. The growing number of teacher and education related sites is getting too big to keep track of. By having these this could really benefit all teachers and thus their students.

CEDU 534 Week 3

As compared to the other online class experience over the summer I like the dim dim a bit more than the other one that was used (educator?) I think that it was refreshing to see a face on the other end of the "line." The main experience from the week was all about RSS. I'm finally beginning to "get it" and like anything it was beneficial to experience it first hand with actually using an aggregate to subscribe to blogs. Sure I had read it and written about it before but it's not until I did it myself that it sunk in. I think that RSS feeds are a new way to experience the web and in a way make it "custom made" for each user. The biggest application that I could see for classrooms are first, teachers learning from other teachers. By subscribing to other teacher's blogs for example through an RSS feed the teacher uses less time and learns more in a more efficient way. Of course research (particularly at the high school level) would be greatly improved by RSS technology

CEDU 534 Week 2

Week 2 was an interesting one. For one it became clear to me that social networking sites and the corresponding technology in general are/have been completely adopted by the youth of today. It seems to me that there are certain duties that come along with our profession of teaching. One of them is to adapt to serve the needs of the children that we have in our care. Their world is changing and to not address that is in essence educational malpractice. A school district that has a blanket policy brohibiting many parts of the web runs the risk of also neglecting to teach our our students how to be safe and responsible on the web. Lets be careful as educators to work with our district administrators to provide the best online saftey information we can.

CEDU 534 Week 1

It was a nice to be back and get right back into the swing of things with web 2.0.

Hate to get philosophical but. . .

I really like the concept of web 2.0 being an interactive - dynamic - back and forth- web where anyone can contribute. There's something democratic and egalitarian abut it. The flip side of course is the other edge of the sword. Since everyone is on the same playing field, the moron who tells you that the Holocaust never happened is right there getting their message out with regular folk. But . . . I think in a way there's more personal responsibility with web 2.0.

Now on to the teaching applications. . .

There's no doubt in my mind that this is the future of teaching. The textbook will become an accent to curriculum and will be replaced by a plethora of 2.0 possibilities. The classroom itself will be transformed with interactive web experiences replacing the paper and pencils of today. That can start today with blogs wikis and podcasts used in my classroom. Personally this year the easiest one that i'd like to start with is podcasting constructed responses for math

It's exciting to be learning about this now - ahead of the curve.

CEDU 527 Educational Leadership in sum

Truth be told one of the reasons I got involved in this program was because of a friend and fellow teacher at my school. He finished up his accelerated program at Stritch in Educational Leadership last year. While I had no interest in being a principal I did want a masters and he spoke highly of Stritch and the accelerated program. He will be getting a position as a principal next year and leaves a void of leadership in my school. He was a key player and got a lot done at the school. Well, I've been thinking of how and in what capacity I'll fill in at some of the leadership roles that he left behind. This class comes right into play with that. To quote John Gabriel "most teachers accept leadership as a reward in itself: they derive a sense of self worth from having their voices heard. . . " I'm looking forward to making a difference this coming year not as an egomaniac but as someone who is legitimately interested in making the lives of children better.

Educational Leadership week 4

I enjoyed playing the game "systems thinking Systems changing." I got the feeling that it was a reasonably accurate portrayal of several key personalities and players within a school district. It was clear after reviewing the biographies on the people that we've all met people exactly like these before. From the eager go getters to the sullen nay-sayers it was an accurate portrayal. The thing that I was struck with is that influencing certain people effected others around them and moved them along with the person. I believe that that is accurate. So it lead me to ask which one am I, the one leading or following. It's my goal to be more of a leader this coming school year.

CEDU 527 Educational Leadership Week 3

There was one particular anecdote that I was reminded of as we were in our chat rooms for the breakout sessions online. The topic was: What are some of the advancements in different fields of society over the last series of years. The anecdote popped into my head related to the topic of telephones and deals with my grandfather and his proud LOTI level of 0.

Some time in the 1980s the Ohio telephone company was doing a major overhaul on it's phone lines presumably to modernize them in some way. One day they stumbled across on old "party line" that was still in use. Yes, that was my grandparents phone line. Of course all of the other people on the party line had long ago gotten their own private lines so that only my grandparents line was left connected. When the telephone company called my grandfather to inform him of this they seemed to assume he would be happy to switch over to their new and improve technology. They didn't know my grandfather very well. "If it ain't broke don't fix it" was a life philosophy for him.
After multiple dead ends trying to convince him over the phone they actually sent someone out to his house to "sweet talk" him to switch over. He was offered new phones, free long distance for a period of time and so on. Although my grandfather was the farthest thing from a sell out, he finally agreed.

The application of this anecdote to the broad topic of educational leadership is this. Maybe you have to do the sweet talk to the level 0 teacher and visit their classroom one-on-one to get them to come around. And all the while respect them and their views. The tools for schools article was extremely insightful on the Millennial generation but one thing I liked about it was it never ridiculed the older generations but merely pointed out the differences. As I'm more of a Gen-Xer myself I appreciate that view.

CEDU 527 Educational Leadership Week 2

I was very impressed with the format of last weeks online class. The "eluminate" online site is a great idea. I was impressed with how dynamic and interactive it was. With the written chat feature, the lecture, the slide show and of course the audio contributions it was enough to keep you busy the whole time and yet somehow pay attention to everything. Oddly enough there was no difference in my urge to contribute to class discussion as compared to a regular face to face class. I was a little unsure about my internal microphone and would have liked a "sound check" before the session began in order to confirm it but got just as much out of the written text and following along.

CEDU 527 Educational Leadership Week 1

At the risk of divulging too much personal info I've just never viewed myself as much of a leader in any school setting. For whatever reason I tend to err on the side of not making myself look bad so as a result little to no leadership action of any kind is initiated by me in a professional setting within the staff dynamic. - At this point I want to clarify that I initiate plenty of great things within my classroom and within the classroom dynamic as opposed to a staff dynamic. So where's all this going. . .
I'm very much looking forward to this class. Week one certainly felt different than the other classes and It was nice to get into the rationale behind leadership. I like the premise of the information from this first class and that was that teachers , with the right conditions, are in a position to greatly influence their school. This message was simply very encouraging and positive. I also like the premise of the Gabriel book on teacher leadership and that is that there is a "science" behind teacher leadership and these skills can be taught and utilized by teachers. also an encouraging message.

CEDU 533 WEEK 5 AND 6

Week five's class was spent being with my newborn daughter in the hospital. She's just such a cutie. I found myself reflecting on the future and what kind of a world she'll be growing up in and what sort of student she'll be. Further I ponder a bit of what schools will be like in 5 years when she enters kindergarten and beyond. Hopefully it will be more along the lines that were talking about in our classes and that we wrapped up talking about at the end of the session on week 6. It's all about dynamic learning as opposed to static learning or one way learning from the teacher ot the student. For example Web 2.0 is dynamic and interactive with so many possible applications for a richer education.

Finally the staff at St. Mary's hospital all had an amazing communication system. They would press a button on what was something like a pager on their shirt and say something like "FIND DR. JOHNSON" then an automated voice would say Dr. Jonson is busy or would put you through for a personal conversation with Dr. Jonson as if it were a cell phone call. This seemed to me to be a small step away from the communicators in the TV series Star Trek. Pretty cool.

CEDU 533 week 4

The mid term has come and gone and I'm amazed how much I bring it up in conversation with friends and family when they ask how grad school is doing. To be honest it's just that I haven't taken a mid term since my undergrad days about a decade ago. Something about it still juiced me up and tweaked me out when I started it last Wednesday. I relaxed and actually had fun with it after my initial apprehension. At the same time I was thinking of my students and how I , as a teacher, have gradually done more and more performance assessments as opposed to a traditional "paper and pencil" test. I appreciate those performance assessments in a whole new way now.

I'm looking forward to learning more about CSS and applying it to my web pages. It just doesn't seem like that much more work relative the benefit you get in return. I guess the "idle curiosity" question I have is who invents this stuff in the first place. How does someone conjure this code up and have it do what they want it to do? I believe this has been addressed in parts of class but it's an interesting one.

CEDU 533 week 3

I have no real explanation or excuse as to why I waited too long to get this blog entry done for week 3 ( I could venture a guess that it has something to do with my baby on the way and focusing on that). As I scan my memory and notes and syllabus and try to focus in on week 3 I do want to say that I'm starting to get the rationale behind even learning this in the first place and it has to do with the criteria for creating a good web site. Our study teams of course came up with redundant explanations but it was still interesting because it verified that this process can be narrowed down to a science not just an art. From this point teachers can get their heads on strait about how to design their own sites.

In my own opinion, it seems that a lot of teacher created sites that I've been to don't observe these guidelines and end up looking of poor quality.

Cedu 533 Week 2

This week clearly went better then the previous week with regards to the personal homework that is due at the beginning of week 3. It just made more sense this week than last and although it's still challenging and time consuming, it took less time than last week. Secondly, there was something Prof. Sklar said in last weeks class when talking about the midterm exam and the class in general. He mentioned that people we getting better at this then in previous years. He credited "web 2" for that increase saying that people were simply more familiar with basic concepts and could relate to HTML better by having been exposed to Wikis and the like. I agree that that is personally the case for me as the connection I make in my naggen to make sense of HTML is brought about more redilly because of my experiences with WIKIs etc.

DECU 533

The idea of HTML programming antimidated me at first, to be quite honest. However once I got going I realized that it's just like any skill. . . with a little practice you can get the hang it pretty quickly. Really it's just a matter of spending the time necessary for the accurate programing. In some ways I made the connection to carpentry or pottery. . . when you see the finished product you end up with that sense that you've built something. The one exception I had was the insertion of a graphic onto the web site. That was far more difficult then I pictured and I never mastered it. When I was successful the picture was far too large and I was never successful at resizing it.
The biggest problem that I had, oddly enough, wasn't with the editing but the FireFTP. At the beginning I just never got any rythym with using it. I would place the index.htm in odd places and loose track of it continually. It was in my study team where I learned the trick of centralizing everything in a desktop folder. Only from that point afterward did everything flow.

Cedu 531 Week 5

As I look back and reflect on the information gleened from the class I can't help but to think that this is the wave of the future of teaching. I predict in 20 years the use of these types of projects will be used commonly in most classrooms. The idea is that these products allow students to take ownership of their learning.

That said, the specific project I have in mind that uses digital story telling is an extension of something I do called student of the week. This is a classroom and personal self esteem building activity in which one student has a special week that they are assigned to throughout the year. During that week they present information about themselves to the class. I've always had the template for the presentation on a poster. The poster requires some drawing or photographs of personal things that show information about the student. Why not have this format be a digital tale? Several applications such as photostory, imovie or voicethread could be utilized? The presentation would be far more engaging and much more individualized and could still include traditional presentations when appropriate.

CEDU 531 week four

I was really very impressed with the concept of podcasting in general and specifically with applications to education. For some reason I'm caught up on the personal applications for teachers. I know that's relatively low on the LoTi level but I can't get past it. The idea of recording a lesson and saving that as a podcast has many applications. First any student could gain access to it and use it for catching up when absent, for review, as a study tool before tests. Parents could access it to better help their students with homework. As a side note you I can't help but to reflect on my own teaching whenever I listen to a recording of my instruction. For the students it could replace, in may instances, a written report on nay variety of topics. Secondly it could be used in conjunction to oral reports.

Here's a link to my podcast on the use of podcasts in education.

531 week 3

I think that teachers are all just storytellers . I make up stories all the time while teaching even in the most mundane or unusual lesson that would not necessarailly apply to these 7 elements. Take long division for example. There's the standard acronym to help students remember the steps: DAD , MOM , SISTER , BROTHER . I'll make up stories about the family to help teach the steps. The problem is sometimes I get a little to animated and hyper and will somply try to cram too much into a lesson. I might take it too fast trying to do too much wheter it's different methods to do the same problems or trying to explain too much information for little students to handle. Therefore, the one element that really stood out to me and made me reflect is economy. The fact of the matter is that often times less is more. To focus on just certain aspects of a lesson and thus ceratin aspects of a story is more meaningful, and students will often walk away with a better understanding.

Cedu 523 week 2

That voicethread is a great sight and our group had a lot of fun doing the civil rights assignment. I believe that I could easilly use this program in my classroom given the proper set up and support. I see it used in the same way as I mentioned last week. In general it's application goes to anything that asks for a presentation of information of virtually any kind. I could see motivation being high and students that might not normally be motivated will be highly so with Voicethread as an instrument.

CEDU 531 week one

How I might use digital story telling in my class. . . I think that it's use is something that could be integrated into most an topic in any area. First, I could see it used as a substitute for certain types of written reports that I assign. An example of where one could be used is a variation on a "book report" that I recently assigned. That was an old fashioned "shoe box diorama" with about a page of written text describing the scene. A digital storytelling would be a perfect way of retelling that scene using a digital camera to take a picture of the students diorama and then a voice over to showcase the writing. Digital storytelling would increase motivation and enhance the report itself in most instances.

CEDU 521 Summary

As this class wind down I'm thinking of my blog needed for the sum of the information gleaned. I like to think of this also in terms of an evaluation of the class itself. Prior to the class I was thinking of technology integration in terms of "The students are in the computer lab a lot? These guys know their stuff and their teacher must be great." It was only when I digested LoTi that I realized that the technology should be integrated into a product that produced or reflects higher level thinking. I guess I always kind of knew it but LoTi clarified it for me. This was connected to the other major piece of the class which was Project Based Learning. This was much more inspiring to me then I first thought it would be. To be quite honest, I feel I occasionally give assignments that are not meaningful and/or "busy work" in my class. I try not to and I think every teacher is guilty of it to some degree, but I feel these assignments bog down the class and me. PBLs are the remedy for this. They engage the students and the teachers. It's an easy way of getting technology into effective, higher level projects and has proven to be a real morale booster in a classroom. I'm excited to do more of this in the future.

Cedu 521 Response to others blogs

As I read through the blogs of others from the class I was struck with how much they ebbed and flowed. This could be seen in some of the range in responses from frustration to encouraging statements. You could even see this as far individuals from one week to the next. I guess what I'm left with is "all's well that ends well." What I saw with some peoples blogs was a clearer understanding of the Unit Plan as time went on. It's through struggling with something that you seem to grow and produce a better product or a better result or otherwise learn something new.

CEDU 521 Week 4

This last weeks presentations on LoTi in the class were interesting. First, I must say that the scenario of having them in front of the school board added a component of educational leadership. I happen to be at a school with a great environment conducive to educational technology but it was still interesting to see my school through the LoTi framework.

CEDU 521 Week 3

I must say that as time has continued and I'm more on roll with my unit plan, I'm excited to implement it. I like the general contributions of the text into our class and I believe that the text has had some influence into my Unit Plan. For me, at the very least, it's planted a seed as to how I approach all lessons with my students. I've also already had some basic plans into the extra days extension into my 8 day Unit Plan.

CEDU 521 Week 2

This weeks emphasis on PBL was a nice follow up from the first week. The video from edutopia, narrated by Robin Williams, was a good one and made a further case for the value of PBL. The discussion towards the end of class on Feb 20th focused on the "end-all-be-all" of PBL. I guess I'd like to think that we, as teachers are trained to meet the needs of our class. We know whether a group of our students needs the structure of more formal work or whether they can handle the environment of a PBL. Issues of: How long should a project go? Who should generate the question? I think the answers to these good questions are going to be different from year to year to best meet the needs of our students.

CEDU 521 Week 1

Something that really struck me while working on the videos from Edutopia is just how successful these Project Based Learning scenarios are with children that wouldn't otherwise enjoy the traditional educational model, as well as students who could still do just fine with more traditional methods. By using technology with PBL it simply is a big motivator to a lot of students. My step-father is a child and adolescent psychiatrist who regularly works with at risk youth. As we talk shop he has continually maintained that schools need to rethink their approach towards education to better reach these students. Although he doesn't have a teaching background he believes that lessons in school should be more like a video game to better reach all students. I believe that these PBL can catch the spirit of the kind of scenario that he's describing. Indeed video game design in a high school in Washington DC was covered on one of the videos I took a look at on the edutopia website. I'd love to learn an application appropriate for use in my 4th grade class.

525 Week 4

The last week of class had a real benefit in several ways. First and foremost, I got a better idea of the concepts of Webquests. It makes sense to utilize the resources on the web in a functional and proscribed way that brings the most benefit to a student's learning. Another thing "clicked" for me this week. That was the importance of evaluations for evaluating webquests. Looks can be deceiving. Good evaluation tools are important.

I liked the quizlab.com a great deal. It was very versatile in the options that were available. I'm also very excited about the potential for creating social networking sites for students in an educational setting. I'm looking forward to hearing updates on the proposed chemistry site at Whitnal High School.

CEDU 525 week 3

I'm very encouraged by the reaction to the issue of cyber-bullying and internet safety in general. The safety sites out there like iSafe and wired safety are truly cutting edge. With the exponential growth of the social networking components of the internet, educators seem to be one step behind in general. However these sites, with things like 24 hour cyber-bully support and resources for teachers and parents, are very important.

The site that interested me the most this week was voice stream. This is a neat site. Any activity that encourages multi sensory approaches is going to be a motivator to students. In addition, when children can "see it, hear it, say it" that's when research suggests that they learn best. Great tool with real potential for the classroom.

CEDU 525 Week 2

The class session for the week of December before Christmas was an interesting one. The work that we did on quizzes that we did were an interesting snapshot on some of the information that's out there. Tickle was perhaps the most interesting. Having looked through all of the personal quiz sites, I'm not fully sure of all of the sites relevance to teaching. Most of them seemed more for fun and not always academic in nature. The teacher created quiz sites became some of my favorites. Great application for quizlet, quizlab and Class Marker specifically. Lots of potential for any lesson.

The individual assignment from week #2 was a good one. While the web assignment was very time consuming it was well worth it. Simply put, you benefit from the time you put into something like that. I will use these ten web sites in my current social studies unit on the Midwest. I'm looking forward to sharing the results.