Conclusion

The End. That's all there is to say for a conclusion right? I wish. Well, here goes...

This semester has been the longest of my life. I came into this class wondering what I could possibly learn about technology that I did not already know, and was amazingly surprised at the amount of things I learned from this class. I can now say that I understand social bookmarking, webquests and curriculum webs, wikis, podcasts, and the nightmare of copyright. If you don't believe me, scroll down to the previous weeks where I talked about these topics, because why recreate this information for you if you can access it for yourself below? 

What I will definitely be creating for myself for next year is some form of a classroom website. With the introduction to weebly and wikis, and the work on our curriculum webs, I have discovered how easy and manageable a website can be. This will be a great resource for me to reflect back on pacing and what was covered throughout the year, but also a great resource for my students to access recommended websites, find links to my online grade book and e-mail, look up homework, and navigate through a curriculum web. I feel that once I have this structure in place and my students are familiar with it from day one, that as the year progresses I can add in other technology tools on the website throughout the year.

While this will be taking a significant amount of initial time, I believe that the payoffs will be well worth the time it takes to set-up. I have learned this throughout the semester with the implementation of the smartboard in my classroom, the transfer from the traditional gradebook, to the online version of snapgrades. Rather than my students constantly asking me if they have completed their homework assignments or which homework assignments they are missing it is all accessible to them right online. While it doesn't seem like much, it has saved me considerable headaches and class time, and allowed me time to focus on the students understanding and learning of the material.

After I have gotten my feet wet with the website, I will definitely be incorporating a curriculum web for my students to complete in class as not all of my students have internet access at home. As far as social bookmarking and blogging go, I think I will hold off on incorporating these into the classroom until later. It is very overwhelming to think of getting a handle on classroom management and lesson plans while keeping up with all of these technological aspects as well. Overall, I have learned a lot, and I hope you have gotten something out of my blog as well.

Farewell,

Donna

Social Bookmarking

Have you ever found yourself away from your home computer or laptop, and wanting the links to your favorites? Or perhaps you just bought a new computer and are dreading having to recreate your list of favorites. Well if you have, social bookmarking is probably a great idea for you. This week we had a presentation on social bookmarking, which before I had never even heard of. Like most of the terms on the web you can figure out what it means from its name. Instead of bookmarking in your favorites on your web browser at home, you would bookmark the sites or tag the sites on a social bookmarking website. You can create your own site with all of the links to your favorite sites in one place that is accessible wherever internet access is. 

For use in the classroom  you can create a page just for your students with links to relevant sites that they might find helpful for class. Then there comes April Fool's Day, and because you can rename the links you can leave them all as they are and change them to rick roll your kids and have them watch Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up music video. You might run into some problems if your students actually needed to link those sites that you post that night so just be careful as with everything in the lovely field of teaching!

Smartboards

In the beginning of this course I started out with the old school classroom tools of a chalkboard an eraser and chalk in the front of my classroom. Since then, a smartboard has been installed, and I have noticed a significant change in my students engagement level, and have also been surprised by how much they have taught me about the smartboard. At first I was hesitant to get it up and running, because it meant changing how I taught. It meant, learning how to use the notebook software for the smartboard so that I could put together notes in the notebook software, and finding the multimedia contained within the notebook software. I've never had a hard time learning software, and usually am able to pick it up right away, but being a new teacher overwhelmed with all the other aspects that are going on in the classroom the smartboard was another obstacle to overcome.

Then I had it up and running. I connected it to my laptop, and then of course encountered some problems transforming my smartboard from a large computer screen into a smartboard on which I could actually write, from where it has been smooth sailing. I have discovered websites that have smartboard tools and games to teach students about finding the area of a trapezoid and actually manipulating the trapezoid until it turns into a parallelogram so the students can understand where the formulas come from. And watched as their confused expressions turned to ones of understanding as a voice from the speakers told them the exact same thing I had told them two minutes earlier.

In analyzing the different technology tools available this semester, and overcoming my own obstacle with the smartboard, I have discovered that while there are definitely some large learning curves to overcome at first the rewards and possibilities are endless from there. 

Using Multimedia

Picture yourself giving your students a math textbook in the beginning of the school year that only has text and problems to solve. Difficult right? The textbooks we give to our students, have notes, a glossary in english and spanish, introductory letters, interesting facts in the margin, colored pictures and diagrams, among many other elements. These are the pieces that help you to actually open these books and read them or look at them for more than a moment.

Well a curriculum web works the same way. The more multimedia elements that you include in it, the more engaging and effective it will be. What exactly am I referring to when I say multimedia? Well, multiple forms of media, text, pictures, movies, animations, and sound. In the past it was audio and visual messages that reinforced text based messages, now the reverse is true. In that case, it seems illogical not to include the audio aids in your website that will more clearly communicate and engage your students in a learning experience. 

Here are a few tips. If your images and graphics have large file sizes they will take longer to load, which can be very inconvenient and annoying when viewing. In that case you want to make sure your files are as compressed as possible without losing any of the quality. The format in which you save your images and graphics makes a difference in the size so pay close attention. Use JPEG files for full-color photographs, because it can maintain the elements better than other formats when compressed. GIF files are best for logos, cartoons and illustrations with areas of solid color. Keep on the lookout for PNG (portable network graphics) files which are better than GIF at compressing files and result in the quality being affected very little.

Wikis

The first thing that comes to mind when I hear the word wiki is wikipedia. Obvious association I know, but that is all I could think of. After doing a bit more research and the listening to the class presentation on wikis the other week I am beginning to understand the elements that make a wiki, and why wikipedia is a wiki. Did you know that wikis have been around since the mid 1990s, and it wasn't until two years ago that the word wiki found a place in the Oxford English Dictionary? Just some food for thought. Anyway, back to wikis.

So what makes a wiki? It is a collaboration of websites which can be edited and modified by multiple users with access to it. I like to think of it as a website version of Google Docs. Every time I have a group presentation to do or a group paper to put together I find myself setting up a Google Document where we can all collaborate simultaneously on the same document. You can see edit history, and who made what changes at all times if you have access to the document. After the presentation I discovered that wikis work the same exact way. There is also a way for the creators to see who made what changes and when those changes were made. 

Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia doing exactly that. It has multiple users pooling information to create and modify websites in order to provide viewers with information. The applications for wikis are endless, and there are many different ways that we can utilize them as teachers. I am considering creating a wiki for my class next year where I will have different pages for each of the ten chapters in our textbook. In the beginning of the year I will have students go on to provide information that they already know about the topics, and then as the topics continue they can add new information that is learned. Don't worry the editing won't stop there, they can then go back and as new topics are learned, show how there are different links between the topics and explain how different topics connect to one another. This would be a great resource for gauging how well students are really grasping all of the topics in class, and engage them outside of the classroom to continue to think about the topics.

Factors Impacting Curriculum Webs in Schools

Curriculum webs are a great way to engage students in learning, and elicit higher-order thinking in the classroom. However there are many different factors that need to be considering when we think about their implementation in schools. Well obviously we need internet access, but what else is involved? First there are the people to consider, the teachers, the learners (some of which are most likely special needs in your public school classrooms), classrooms, computers, computer labs, connectivity, software, and e-mail. Now within each of these topics there are a broad range of smaller factors that will no doubt impact the use of a curriculum web in schools, but those are the main factors.

My advice, prepare for everything that can go wrong! If you are doing it in school, make sure that you print out copies of the necessary websites just in case the network decides to crash that day, or the computers won't turn on. In that case, the students are still able to complete some of the task and the period is not wasted. Make sure that if you want the students to work independently that there are enough computers for them to do so. You may want to have an option for them to work in pairs, so that you can improve your chances that there will be enough working computers for your students to use. Also, make sure that they all can navigate the curriculum web and work in tools to help anticipated student problems along the way. By over preparing on what the students will need help on and working it into the curriculum web, you will be better prepared to handle other situations that arise such as misbehavior, or computer problems. Try to eliminate the problems before they arise!

Podcasting

So this week my group and I did a presentation to the class about podcasting. My only experience with podcasts before I started my research on the topic consisted of me coming across a free download for Japanese pods, which were a series of podcasts on learning Japanese. These were broken up into small manageable pieces from which I could listen to and practice saying the words. Other than that podcasts in my mind were located in a separate section at the iTunes store.

What are podcasts exactly? Well the definition comes right from the word. Pod comes from "iPod" and cast referring to "broadcast". The name is really just as creative and explicit as macaroni and cheese. I mean, how much simpler can it get? Well, it can't get much simpler, but it can get more complicated! Don't worry though it's not too bad, there are the regular audio podcasts which I mentioned above, and then there are vidcasts which have video along with the audio, and finally there are enhanced podcasts with still frame pictures that go along with the audio.

Lastly, how is it going to relate to you as a teacher? Well, this is a great resource if you have a projector or a smartboard in your classroom. Instead of listening to you explain a topic for the third time, you can show a vidcast of another teacher, or even other students explaining a topic. You can even get the students more engaged and involved in the whole idea if you have the resources to have your students create their own vidcasts or podcasts. This is a great way for students to showcase their knowledge, and be creative and have fun with it in the process.