CED0540 Week 3

I've been considering how to use surveys in my future classroom. I've been reading a book called Science Formative Assessment: 75 Practical Strategies for Linking Assessment, Instruction, and Learning by Page Keeley. I just read of a formative assessment strategy that Keeley calls Student Evaluation of Learning Gains. The strategy includes statements that the student reacts to using a 3 to 5 point scale in the areas of student interest, content knowledge, and skills. The purpose of the strategy is to gather data for the teacher to use to gain feedback on student perceptions of a given unit.

It strikes me that knowledge of how to design a survey would come in useful when using the assessment strategy. If the survey is designed correctly, the teacher should be able to walk away with a good sense of how students feel about a unit and then be able to determine next steps.

CED0540 Week 2

Well I finally figured out what I did incorrectly with my work last week and now I feel like I've got a better handle on things. While we're not being required to calculate the skew for our assignments, my father loaned me a stats good and I think I'll try to figure out the skew as well. I tend to be a problem solver and I want to extend my learning in this area.

I think once I have a better understanding of stats I'll be able to appreciate any information containing statistics in a better way. That's also why I like science. Once you have a basic understanding, the world makes a whole lot more sense.

CED0540 Week 1

OK I'm gonna come right out with it - I think I could really dig statistics. I last had statistics by Sophomore year of college. I allowed myself to be overwhelmed by it. Now I'm at a point when I can appreciate it.

I started working on calculating standard deviations by hand. I then went to the computer to check my work using a standard deviation function in Excel. I'm not coming up with the same answer. Hmmmm. I think I'm not using the function correctly (at least I hope that's the case!) I'll spend tonight going back over it and figure out where I went wrong.

I've had occasion in past courses to review some meta-analysis data. After getting a better background in statistics, I'll feel much more comfortable in appreciating educational studies.

Science Learning Profile

I've begun work on learning how to use technology in differentiation. The learning profile below is based upon the work of Gayle H. Gregory and Elizabeth Hammerman in their book Differentiated Instructional Strategies for Science: Grades K-8.

CED0530 Week 5

I'm thrilled that we're reviewing rubrics this week and that one of our assignments is to make one. I used rubrics when I taught previously and really started to really like them. It's been awhile since I've had to design one so I'm glad to get some practice. I reviewed Kathy Schrock's website and was happy to see "A Rubric to Evaluate a Rubric." That's exactly what I need!

When I first started teaching I didn't think about how I was going to review student work until I sat down to do so. It wasn't until my second semester that I realized how ridiculous that was! I finally figured out that giving students rubrics produced better student products and made grades easier to justify. Sitting down to those papers wasn't quite as scary anymore.

While I'm primarily interested in Science related rubrics, I want to look at as many rubrics as I can possibly find in any subject! I'd like to learn more about using rubrics within the Math classroom. If anyone out there in the intermediate/middle school grades would be willing to share their most successful rubrics - I'd really appreciate it.

CED0530 Week 4

I have seen a couple of the presentations from the book done in real time. For example the Shift Happens presentation. The presentation made an impression upon me. Now I understand a little better why it did so. The presentation employs the principals introduced in Presentation Zen. The slides don't utilize bullet points, they have high contrast and the pictures contribute to the message of the presentation.

I liked the examples of Prezi. As the presenter mentions it definitely has a "Wow" factor. This delivery type might capture a few students attention just because it is a little different. At this point I've created my account but haven't played around with it yet. It would be interesting to take my recent "Zen Redo" into a Prezi and see how it changes.

CED0530 Week Three

Reading Chapter Six of Presentation Zen has made me aware of how much design thought is really put into Reynolds' presentations. Nothing is done by accident. I spend some time reflecting on the use of the big four principles within my current presentations.

1. Contrast- I've tried to use contrast between the background color and font color but that's really as far as it went.

2. Repetition - I've used repetition through choosing a background template. I hadn't considered using a unifying element such as the red note and paperclip in the example presentation.

3. Alignment - I've used alignment with text, either centered or right justified. Easy but boring.

4. Proximity - I believe that I've used good proximity, but I definitely wasn't thinking consciencely about it at the time.

My presentations could stand to have a lot of improvement.

CED 0530 Week 2

This week I went to a DPI meeting. The purpose of the meeting was to make us aware of new changes to the Individual Student Enrollment System (ISES) state reporting that is done every year by school districts in Wisconsin. There are four reports and it takes about 2 1/2 months to complete the reporting.

The presenter is an expert in the field and is well known by those who are responsible for this type of reporting. The presenter used Power Point to deliver her presentation. As I observed the presentation I considered all that I'm learning about Presentation Zen.

How could the presentation be more reflective of the principles proposed by the book? I have to admit that I'm skeptical that the presenter could do it anyway other way than she did. Her slides had 4-6 bullet points on each slide and there were certainly more than 6 words per slide on them although she did write her information with an "economy of words" as Ed Begley Jr. has said. The handouts were copies of the slides and there were no graphics. Although I do think that most of my presentations could greatly benefits from the Zen principals, I'm not convinced that these are easily applied to a technical discussion when state statute is sometimes referred to. I certainly cannot image choosing a graphic of an ocean view to enhance a slide about state discipline reporting.

I then turned my attention to the "stickiness" principals. Here is how I've related then to the state reporting presentation:

1. Simplicity - Hard to do when discussing state reporting. If the state required that it be reported on - then it's important.

2. Unexpectedness - My expectations were definitely violated. Always need to adjust to new requirements.

3. Concreteness - Natural speech was used as well as good humor.

4. Credibility - It's DPI therefore it's credible

5. Emotions - Many emotions came through me as I listened - I vacillated between bouts of despair, relief, and even hope.

6. Stories - the presenter did tell stories to accompany her presentation. They helped to give history and meaning to the presentation.

CED0530 Week 1

I could sit and look at the pictures in our Presentation Zen book for hours. I'm tried to pare down a lot of extraneous things in my life right now so this book really fits in well for me. It makes me think of that old adage of"'keep it simple stupid." I'm also rethinking how I put presentations together and the process that I use to create them. Reynolds encourages readers to "plan analog." I admit that I design my presentations right in the slideware. Next time I'll try Reynolds' suggestion and plan it on paper first.

I think many people design their presentations as documents like I do. I recently reviewed a presentation by a well known educational speaker that was more than 140 slides. Right off the bat I was a little put off. While the message was valuable, I'm not sure that that many slides were needed. Many of them were inspirational quotes. They were nice, but I'm not sure that the contributed enough to be vital to the communication.

The article "Research points the finger at PowerPoint" made an impression on me. I am interested in learning more about the cognitive load theory. Is this why people's eyes glaze over during presentations? What are the implications for how information is presented to students? I think it would be interesting to explore.

0525 Week Six Reflection

Having been out of the classroom for 10 years I really enjoyed reviewing the strategies during this course. I remember using the note taking and summarizing strategy in my classroom as well as the non-linguistic representation strategy. Having been a Science teacher, I also asked students to form a hypothesis and test it.

The aha moment that I had during the course was to reinforce effort. In my future classroom I will use this strategy to demonstrate to students the relationship between effort, learning and grades. I will also make much more use of cooperative learning in my classroom. I hope that my future school will be receptive to the practice of students collaborating on-line (assuming that it is appropriate to the grade level and learning targets.) I'd really like to see this strategy in action.

I come away from this class feeling more confident and incredibly excited to begin working with students and implementing all the strategies we discussed.

CED0525 Week Four Cooperative Learning and Feedback

The authors of our textbook recommend that teachers form student groups considering 5 elements:

• Positive interdependence
• Face to face promotive interaction (cheering each others efforts and accomplishments)
• Individual and group accountability
• Interpersonal and small group skills (communication skills, trust etc.)
• Group processing- reflecting on how well the team is functioning and how to function even better

I was happy for these suggestions and have been reflecting on them. Using cooperative learning groups presents many challenges, but also offers numerous benefits to students. Although it's third in the list, I've always been very concerned about 'individual and group accountability.' My husband tells tells a story of a high school group project that didn't go well when other group members didn't perform their parts of the project. When he discussed it with the teacher, the instructor told him to 'just make them do it.' Should the individual and group portions be weighted equally? Would this address a situation where one person just doesn't perform to the level of the rest of the group? Managing groups well contributes to how people perceive collaborating with others.

Group processing - the ability to reflect on how well the team is functioning and how to function even better is important. I think that this would be effective if done throughout a long term project. Hopefully it would prevent issues from arising. My only concern is how to model and coach students to do this in a manner than is productive and doesn't create a complaining session.

As I have already stated in our discussion forum, I never would have thought to actively demonstrate to students the connection of effort to results. In the past I've made statements to students like 'Try harder." Looking back at it-this wasn't very helpful. I liked our texts illustration of documenting effort and grades in a spreadsheet and then graphing the relationship. Eureka! I think I would perform an activity like this at the beginning of the year and maybe then again about half way through the year.

CED0525 Week Three Graphic Organizers

I enjoyed exploring bubbl.us, Education Oasis and Exploratree. bubbl.us had the ability to create organizers using a parent and child bubble hierarchy. I didn't see this approach in the other two tools. Relationships between bubbles are made by using directional lines in bubbl.us; lines and arrow graphics can also be made in Exploratree. In Exploratree the font style, color and size can be changed. While the color of the bubbles can be changed in bubbl.us, I didn't see the ability to change the style or color of the text.

Exploratree offered a wide variety of ready made organizers that could be completed on-line. I didn't see this option on bubbl.us. Both Exploratree and bubbl.us provided the opportunity to create custom organizers. Exploratree can accommodate the inclusion of JPEG files into the documents. I didn't see this as available on bubbl.us. I felt like this would really add to the interest of organizers and brings in the non-linguistic representations that help students make connections. I also liked Exploratree capability to lock elements so that they can't be changed by other users.

Both Exploratree and bubbl.us had the ability to share, print and e-mail the documents. In bubbl.us the code can be obtained so that the organizer can be included in blogs and other websites.

Education Oasis offered 58 free PDF organizers including the following types:

• cause and effect
• character and story
• compare and contrast
• sequence, cycle, timeline and chain of effects
• vocabulary development and concept organizers.

Some of the organizers can be completed on-line and then printed. Others can't. This site seems to primarily be a library of pre-made, unchangeable organizers. I think I would use it for basic organizers that I want students to complete by hand. I would use the other tools if I wanted to do a custom organizer or if creating an organizer was part of the learning task.

With all of these options it made me wonder why anyone would buy a graphic organizer book at the teacher supply store.

CED0525 Week TWO Student Response Systems

This week I began reviewing student response systems. This concept is wonderful. I'd love to see one of these systems in action. Instead of typing in a narrative, I've added my Word document by using scribd.com


Comparison of Student Response Systems

0525 Week One Article Reaction

Reading this article made me consider how long it's been since I've taken any kind of statistics or educational research class. Instead I had to approach the information from a conceptual standpoint.

As is pointed out in the article, the meta analysis of using technology in education only demonstrated an effect size of .410. It further indicated that it had a negative effect of -.091 on student behavior. This made curious about a few things.

I noticed that the study was published in 2003 and considered studies that were published between 1997-2003. Much has happened since 2003. I wonder what the results of a meta analysis would be if it considered more recent work? I realize that it takes time to gather results, but I still wonder. Many of the tools we've been discussing in our program have only begun to be used wide spread within the last few years. Once more teachers and schools adopt these technologies, how will the effects change?

CED0525 Week One

I've been out of education for a while, so I'm really looking forward to working with the strategies that we'll be exploring in class. Things are so different compared to how I taught years ago.

I taught at a private K-8 school out of state. There was no professional development. I had a mentor for my first year, but there wasn't mush to the mentoring program. I didn't have any regular meetings and the one piece of advice that I got from my principal was to take more grades. I finally feel like I'm getting the professional development that I craved.

I can tell that implementing these strategies takes a good deal of preparation. Combining them in a method that supports students and provides flexibility is a skill unto itself.

I've been going through all of the on-line resources that have been mentioned in our text so far and bookmarking them in my delicious account. There are some great resources here. One of my personal favorites is Stellarium, an on-line planetarium. Users can see what the sky will look like using a given time and location. I tried this one at home. Both me and my six year old daughter loved it.

Can't wait for more great resources!

CEDo520 Week 3

As much as I like Google Docs, I've found a couple of new tools that I really like. I used Buzzword for the first time. I found it very similar to the word processor in Google Docs, but the inability for those without Gmail accounts has always bugged me. With Buzzword I can designate anyone to edit the document.

I also found 280 Slides to be similar to the presentation tool in Google Docs.

I also put together my first survey on Survey Monkey. Part of my job function is to train staff on processes using our student information system, Skyward. I need to spend some time this summer reflecting on my training methods. I'm going to use my survey to discern how to make my training sessions faster. I'd be curious to hear from teachers who have used Survey Monkey in the classroom.

CED0520 Learning Resources-Week Two

I found a couple great new resoures this week. Alexa.com provides data on web sites. The user types in the site to be reviewed and alexa.com provides information such as who typically visits the site and the countries where the searched site has been accessed. Alexa also provides information on what other sites link to the searched site. The author of the searched site is provided as well as contact information.

I also found Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators on the Discovery Channel website. All I can say is 'Paydirt!' As someone who has been out of the classroom for a while, this resource is going to be very valuable to me. Kathy offers great resources on all contect areas. In order to do my site evaluation assignment, I went to Kathy's Guide to find my sites to review.

With all the great resources on the web, I'm relieved to know that I won't have to spend a fortune at the teacher supply store.

CED0520 Week One

The more and more I move through this program the more I realize how crucial it will be to teach students about critical thinking skills. The web is full of information with conflicting information and some of it with the purpose of selling something. Students often think that if they find something on-line then it must be true. I guess I'm starting to think of this type of critical thinking as a type of 'on-line street smarts.' Individuals need to consider the source of information and even more importantly consider carefully what information they themselves publish on the web.

What I learned this week

This week I paid more attention to virus scanners than I ever had before. I wasn't sure what made a good virus scanner so I researched the topic and found an article that was basic enough that I could understand some of the basics. Next time I think I'll make a table so that I can compare products side by side. I would like to learn more about some of the bells and whistles, but basically I found that automatic updates, email and IM scanning, and clean up tools were key. I also liked that some of the products can protect private information like account numbers.

I've started thinking more about disaster recovery plans and how I want to back up my data. I looked at the best buy site and am planning to buy an external hard drive. Now I just have to remember to back up on a regular basis and keep it at a different location. I admit that I'm not usually good at remembering things like this and that's what attracts me to services like Mozy. Do I pay the money to be able to set up an automatic backup schedule or just treat the backup process like I'm paying bills and just dedicate the time on a regular basis?

My district is considering hosting our student information system offsite. I learned that we currently have 7.5 MB of bandwidth and will soon have 9.0. I was shown a basic drawing of how our network is set up. I felt that part was very valuable. One of the concerns regarding hosting offsite is whether or not our new streaming media capabilities will overwhelm the bandwidth that we have. Whether we can segregate the information system's traffic is also being explored.

How this Class Relates - Class 4

I was badly in need of this class. I have very little knowledge of how a computer works and knowledge of hardware. I really need to increase my confidence in the area. I never would have opened up a computer if it wouldn't have been an assignment. When I've gone into a store to buy a computer I've always relied on my husband to help me figure out what to buy. It will be great to feel like I know something.

While I feel a little unsure, I know the remaining assignments will help me learn new skills and help me find good resources.

What Would I Lose?

I don't have many documents on the computer anymore. I store primarily music and photos on my computer. I currently back up my music and pictures to CD. I'd like to investigate backing up my music online. I have some of my pictures on-line, but I should be backing more of them up.

The Future of Windows

In my opinion the future of computing is in cloud computing. More and more people are becoming familiar with tools such as Google Docs. Cloud computing provides greater accessibility in accessing data. I think people will only want more access and opportunities to collaborate. I believe Microsoft will evolve to produce other types of products to support the trend in order to remain profitable.

Computer History for Jenny Staples

When I was 7 years old my father worked for Commodore 64. I remember the day we went to the store to buy our first home computer. I thought my father was nuts. He spent good money on something that didn't apprear to do anything useful. My parents enrolled me in computer programming. In class I learned how to write a program where my name generated multiple times. I wasn't impressed.

My typewriter had to be ripped out of my hands in college. The computer was only good for writing papers. My Junior year my friends started talking about something called electronic mail. I learned how to send a basic messege to a friend I saw all the time anyway. My mother said only businesses and universities would ever use e-mail. I was only marginally impressed.

I taught for a couple of years but then went into banking. A new coworker in our group knew about spreadsheets and the management loved her. I decided that instead of being jealous I could just ask her to teach me. I got hooked. What else could a computer do?

The fact that my job is primarily computer based is a joke in my family. How far I've come. Now I'm impressed.

CED0515 Week 6

This is my first class in the MEIT. I've really enjoyed it. It's felt great to get back into the education conversation. I found the text very helpful. The tools and sites referenced have provided me with a good start. If this is just beginning I know I will continue to get a lot out of the program.

CED0515 Week 5

I felt that reviewing software evaluation tools was very beneficial for me. I've never done a review before and it's nice to know that I wouldn't have to create a tool from scratch. I was also glad that our textbook provides so many great resources so I was able to find a program that I wanted to review.

If I ever return to classroom teaching I know I won't feel overwhelmed when reviewing software.

Creating a Technology Learning Plan will help me to focus on my strengths and discern where I need more development. I tend to be very goal orientated so I think my plan will be very useful for me.

CED0515 Week 4

I choose the Science unit focusing on the rain forest for an upper elementary audience. In the lesson the teacher used the Magic Treehouse series in conjunction with the Imagination Express: rainforest program. In the program students can practice at communication through writing, narrating and animate their own stories.

As I'm not currently in a classroom I'm just now becoming acquainted with the Magic Treehouse series. Osborne has written books that cover a wide variety of topics, particularly history and social studies topics.

This lesson could be adapted to fit many different units as a way to encourage students who need more practice in reading skills.


http://www.intime.uni.edu/video/013iaue/0/

CED 0515 Week 3 Spreadsheets

I use spreadsheets everyday. The job I have in the district involves a lot of data analysis. We have changed some of our districts policies and procedures based on analysis done using spreadsheets.

While I'm not currently in a classroom, I could see where spreadsheets could also help make data based decisions. Spreadsheets could help the teacher determine things like 'how many students that averaged an 80% or better on homework scored an 80% or better on the test?' Grade analysis could help the teacher determine what adaptations or changes need to be made in instruction.

I find that tracking data and analyzing it through spreadsheets helps me make better decisions on policy and procedure for the district.

CED0515 Week 3 - Custom Search

OK - this custom search thing is great. If you're curious, type in 'stars' into the search box.

Science Search Engine

CED 0515 Week 2

Wha hoo! I'm like a kid in a candy store! Suddenly I have even more toys to play with! I'm working on setting up a custom search engine. I think that ability would come in very useful in a classroom setting.

I also set up an evernote account and downloaded the phone app to my cell phone. I've played around a little with it. I think I should play around more with it on my laptop and then learn the phone app. It's easier to learn it on the larger format. Maybe I could use the voice note option to record my grocery list. I always seem to leave my list at home. Pathetic I know, but we all have our excentricities.

I find myself becoming more confident in learning how to find web based tools. For instance I need to edit a PDF file, but don't have Adobe Editor. I did a search for on-line PDF editors and found several. I've decided to try PDF Hammer to see how it works.

CEDO 515 Week 1

All I can say is WOW! I loved our first class! I've taked an on-line class before, but a virtual classroom wasn't involved and I feel that it really inhances the experiences. The back and forth chat is a different experience with me. I don't chat much.

I was relieved to see that the text focuses on learning first and technology second. This was also the first time that I had read the technology standards.