Week 11: Evaluation of Educational Technology as a Current Classroom Teacher

This week, we're supposed to reflect upon the evaluation of educational technology as a current or future classroom teacher. Well this is an easy reflection. I have to honestly say, that I feel like after having taken several classes at UCF over the last three semesters, I feel like I have gone from being lost in the stone ages of "current" classroom technology, to ahead of the Learning Curve for once in my life in something that is becoming such an integral part of a classroom. What's amazing is that most of the technology and resources that I have been introduced to have made my life so much more productive, both in and out of the classroom.

I have learned is that by checking out technology/software, then using it and creating examples, truly does help you determine the worthiness of that technology and how or "if" it pertains directly to your teaching style and individual classroom needs. Since Web 2.0 tools have quickly become the trend that all classroom teachers should learn to incorporate, I have become a hot commodity at my school because of the resources that I ahve been introduced to from UCF and in this class, that I am able to quickly share with other teachers. I think the most important thing is that the learning curve is easy to pick up on even for the most staid teachers who are set in their ways. Just this week, I can honestly say that I was thrilled to be offered a position on a technology committee at my school. A year ago, I would have never been asked, so I think this is pretty neat! My knowledge is setting the stage for changes that are hopefully going to start occuring at Lake Asbury Junior High School. I didn't tell them that I am looking to go to the new high school opening up close by and teach some form of technology course. :)

Since we are supposed to be integrating technology into our classrooms, one of the most important aspects of that is making sure that we are not going "techy" crazy, but learning how best to make technology meet the goals and curriculum first and foremost, not the other way around as I had originally stated earlier this semester. One of the best evaluation words of wisdom that I have picked up this semester is try new things, if it doesn't work find something else. Not every new technology trend out there is going to meet every classroom's needs. It's up to the teacher to determine how best to implement that technology or not at all. No one else knows their students like that of a classroom teacher who works with students on a daily basis.

I do have to say that one of the best resources that I have discovered this semester thanks to this class is a social bookmarking site where you can store cool web 2.0 resources for a later viewing or for sharing with other teachers. Not only does this allow you time for more productivity, it also allows you to evaluate at a later time. I think this is a key tool for classroom teachers to make use of.

~Katie

Cool off with Wikis

I have come to a stopping point on my curriculum wiki for now. I figured out how to add in navigation and other doodads. My presentation for Dr. G. went well on Saturday and I even learned a few new tricks from my talented classmates. :)

Here's the link again for my Vacation Research Project Wiki.

~Katie
vacationresearchproject.pbworks.com

Week 10: Curriculum Wiki Page and Wanting to Kick One's self. Grr!!

I am not typically a procrastinator, but this has been a week of procrastination for me!! :( I'm not sure if the November funk has taken grasp of my work ethic, but this is also going on in my classroom as well. In the last several hours I have been regretting not starting this week's assignment sooner, but there is nothing I can do about it now. I don't think I would have waited this long if I had not been working 4-6 hours each night on my Wiki presentation that I'm presenting Saturday morning in Dr. G.'s EME5053 class. I've never presented for two hours, so I've been stressing about that instead. Go figure. :(

Anyways, here's my reflection about this week's assignment.

I really enjoyed perusing the links on Building Curriculum Pages and Digital Storytelling. I think I must have added delicious bookmarks on each one and will probably recall the sites often as I look for inspiration, ideas, and resources for future use. I really liked the Jamestown link and even shared it with my mother who is a fifth grade teacher and my friend who is an 8th Grade American History teacher. I will be going back to to take a second look at TrackStar, Filamentality, TeacherWeb, and  zWebQuest over the weekend.

I have Diigo installed on my Firefox Explorer and really enjoy making use of it and seeing how other people add sticky notes to various webpages. I was not aware of Diigo Web Slides and made the mistake of pulling that one of the webslide examples up on my teacher computer during class. There were several interesting not entirely appropriate slides, so I had to quickly shut that down. When I have more time, I'm going to reexplore that page. It looked "quite" interesting. LOL!

Typically, I do not create "zipped" files, but have wondered how to do so. 9 out of 10 times I am unzipping files to use with powerpoint presentations or access someone else's work. At school I love to unzip new powerpoint backgrounds because we are still stuck with Office 2003 and the templates there STINK! So I regularly access indezine.com and find creative backgrounds that require a quick unzip and I'm off to the races. It's quick and easy to download a zipped file and usually very quick to unzip them.

Curriculum Page Specs


Here it is: 

http://vacationresearchproject.pbworks.com/

I am quite proud of myself for what I have created in the last five hours. I'm just glad my children are not home because dinner has not happened this evening, nor have my dogs been watered or my jacket removed.

Here's some background on my curriculum page. For the last 4 years, I have been using a Vacation Research Project rather than teaching an old-fashioned Research Paper on a topic that my students will have a hard time writing about. So.....I found something near and dear to them. Planning out a Summer Vacation Project that is integrated with every academic content area.

I have never created an entire webquest from start to finish. I've used handouts with this project and a few web activities, but never something like this. Since I am only recently a Wiki Believer, I can 100% guarantee that I will be using this curriculum page with my students this year. I have to say that I am quite proud of it, but it still needs a few things. I have left out one of the most important things at this point (OBJECTIVES), but will quickly add them over the weekend for a late grade if necessary. Overall, when it is 100% completed, it is an easy vacation project wiki that any teacher could use without recreating the wheel at all. Except perhaps for the Google maps user and password. It is a generic user/pw created specifically for this project, so I don't expect any issues with this account at this time.

I think given the time that I actually allotted for this week for this class, I think I've created a pretty thorough and well thought out Wiki Curriculum Page that I will use this year with my students. :) I'm off for dinner and it's not even 10 p.m. yet! Yay!

Have a fantastic weekend!

~Katie

Web 2.0 Way

Happy Wiki-end!

Several months ago I heard some of my friends at other schools discussing wikis. I went on wikispaces and even attempted to wiki. The bad news is that I quickly gave up because I could not figure out how to make it work or happen for me. So that was that. Then several weeks ago, in one of my classes (maybe this one) a sweet little video called Wikis in Plain English was introduced to me. After watching it once, I knew I had to try to wiki again.

To my surprise, creating a wiki through pbworks.com was SO easy! Within minutes, I had a very basic wiki created and ready to go for immediate use in my classroom. To test drive it, I assigned my students generic usernames (a benefit of pbworks for teachers and students without email addresses). They went home, logged in and took off running on my wiki. Who knew? Now they regularly request to wiki, and I have to say that it's not only much easier to engage them, but I enjoy reading their posts as well.

TO define the role of a wiki in the classroom from my perspective, it's the WWW method, also known as the Whatever, Whenever, or Wherever that is missing from traditional teaching. Both my students and myself can log in and work cooperatively using the WWW method on a given topic from a classroom discussion, to book reports. The opportunities for wikifying your classroom are endless.

Today, I'm not only converted from my earlier thinking about wiki's, I'm now a user and creator amongst my faculty at my school. From sharing lesson plan ideas to implementing a new form of technology integration that is free, I'm glad to be able to share a new and painless tool at my school.

To check out my current wiki projects check out the following wikis that I have created:

EME5053 Wiki

TigerLanguageArts Wiki


Have a great Wiki-end!

~Katie

Want to watch the video that changed me forever? Watch this:

This has been a great week. While working on the Week 8 Module, I have been introduced to several new tools to use in my classroom. The first is a looking at the options that digital media now offers for classroom use in multiple interactive formats. Also, I was introduced to Prezi, the super cool, interactive presentation software that can be used to upgrade from traditional formats. The presentation above was created with Prezi. At first I wasn't too impressed by Prezi, but the more I play with it the more I am finding it to be easier to use.

This week I also was introduced to SlideShare.net. I found many interesting lesson options already available on SlideShare that I could use immediately in my classroom on various topics. Just to see how to embed with this program, you will find a writing powerpoint that I love to use in my classroom when I am teaching paragraph writing with my students. I love to share my work with other teachers, and I love to use what's already been created if it suits my lesson needs.

Hamburger Paragraphs

View more presentations from LAJH.

Looking Ahead: While I was working on embedding, I also had some storytelling assignments to work on in one of my other classes that I'm taking. I discovered Animoto earlier this semester and it has to be one of the easiest online software programs that I have ever used! For this particular project, I had to tell a story about Me. For weeks I was stumped on how I was going to tackle this project. In the end, I created several versions. I wanted to be able to show my students that just because you finish something, doesn't mean that you are really finished. I want to try and embed my video on here, just to see if it works. What I am going to embed is an early version of my video and a final version. I created my video in Animoto and then downloaded that portion of the project into Movie Maker to complete the narration. Overall, I think it turned out better with the narration. I'm looking forward to the possibilities that this class and my other classes are providing me with. :)

~Katie

W/O Narration




With Narration

Week 6 Online Identity Reflections

This week has been a crazy adventure for me. Over the course of the last week, I have had several presentations both at UCF and in my own school. My aunt passed away, my sister is getting married tomorrow, and I have been working like a nut trying to finish the wedding cakes. With this being said, being required to reflectively consider my own online identity has been a challenge. According to the link in my class assignment, my online identity is considered "Digitally Distinct". I created my online profile through Google http://www.google.com/profiles/mrsguzman21 .

Establishing an online profile and updating my About me profile on Blogger, I found to be quite easy. Trying to determine which information to divulge to the world while maintaining my personality without being too stingy with my personal information, is tricky. I want to provide my pertinent details to make myself digitally distinct, but I don't want everyone knowing everything about my life at the same time. As I was considering my audience, I decided that making my profile educator friendly, something that I myself as parent would not be afraid to open on my computer with my students.

As I was reading through Chapter 2 of the Future of Reputation, I was intrigued by the idea of a being both a Diarist and a Journalist. I wondered how blogs came to be, so I was very interested in The Blogfather also known as Glenn Reynolds. He argues that “technology has made it possible for individuals to become not merely pamphleteers, but vital sources of news and opinion that rival large metropolitan publishers in audience and influence." (Solove 16) To apply the same mindset to education, blogging also will prove to be of great significance to the changes and revolutions taking place in educational technology. Being able to blog reflectively about the success and failures of how technology is being used in my classroom, school, and county is one way to hopefully improve my own classroom instruction in the long run.

Personal Learning Plan

This semester I was introduced to a new concept. Perhaps not entirely new, but one with a name. I had never thought of my personal/educational/instructional goals being part of my "PLP" or Personal Learning Plan. However, now that I know what they can be called, I think I will stick with PLP. So with that being said, I'd like to share how I am working on developing my PLP this semester and hopefully into the future.

1. Create Wikis within my school/department to collaborate on lesson plans and unit building, professional development, and technology tricks or ideas.

2. Reflect weekly on classroom experiences and previews of the current week in my classroom by maintaining and publishing blogs at tigerlanguagearts.blogspot.com.

3. Enhance classroom writing projects by incorporating online publishing avenues directly with my students. (i.e. National Writing Archives through the NCTE)

4. Begin to Create Podcasts that provide lessons directly to my students through Audacity and iTunes. While creating Podcasts also subscribing to fellow teachers, classrooms, and instructors will also enable me to better prepare for content lessons, professional development and other situations.

~Katie