BP15_2009123_OneMinuteMessage2

BP14_2009123_PeerReviewWestern

beckyward said...

Wow Joan, this sounds great. As part of one of the classes I teach, we make children's books for elementary aged children and what they should be doing now to prepare for junior high school. This is a freshman level class and we spend time reflecting about the junior high school experience and come up with ideas that we can share with them on preparing for junior high. This is the first time I've taught this class and we just made corny paper books out of construction paper, but I will have to try using this tool as I think the students can get more creative and the elementary aged students will enjoy these books more.

December 13, 2009 10:27 AM

BP13_2009123_PeerReviewCaruso

It is as easy as making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich....
pbwiki.com is a place where you can create your own wiki for classroom use. For educators, there is a choice that allows for classroom use, removing banners and advertisements from the sidebar of your screen. There are many options for using pbwiki in the classroom. PB wiki can be used as a storage place for students to store their best work as an electronic portfolio, and family, friends, and peers can leave comments on their work.

I have used pbwiki in my classroom in the past and was very pleased to see it made the list of web 2.0 tools I discovered. Let me share with you how I used it:

Similar to The FLat Stanley Project that many elementary educators are familiar with, students created a gingerbread man and mailed it to another state to a family or friend. Students would write a friendly letter asking the receiver to take care of their gingerbread man, document the visit in words or with pictures, and report back to the creator (the student). Instead of just receiving mail via the United States Postal Service, we gave hosts the option to communicate what the gingerbread friends did on our wiki. I created a page for each student's gingerbread man that the student could upload images and sentences to, telling about their gingerbread friend. Those hosting a gingerbread man could post comments on what city and state the gingerbread man was in, what they did, and where they are sending them off to next. It was a great project. We also had a page for each student to post and share their individual work. The students loved this because Gramma, Grandpa, and moms and dads and split families could go online to see their student's work. They could post comments of praise and encouragement. Students would rush home to read their comments, and post comments on their friends' pages. It have them a real reason to use phonetic spelling in their young emergent reader lives to communicate with their peers and family members. From this project and the integration of technology into Social Studies with kindergarten and first grade students, I was awarded Outstanding Teacher of The Year from the FLorida Council for Social Studies. It was a great experience. The project was a success, and I would have repeated it if our school decided to not allow us to use outside servers and providers for school related projects. Now we must use iWeb, and they are beginning to branch into Moodle - a personal learning community that is growing within our district.

BP12_2009123_Tool#4(CIS)

Most of you have probably already heard of CIS, but it is new to me. CIS stands for Career Information System. This tool allows students to pretty much line of their life and career. There are several links and information available in this tool. The user starts by creating a portfolio and customizing it to their likings. From there, the user will spend endless hours adding information to their portfolio that they will be able to keep for a lifetime.

I started off in the scholarships section. I was specifically looking for any additional scholarships that I could apply for to help pay for this program. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any because most scholarships are for undergraduate programs. I then began to research schools that offer programs in education technology and was able to learn a little more about Full Sail University and the Education Media Design and Technology program.

The next thing I began working on was my resume. There isn't really anything fancy about the resumes, but the program will help you recall all of your work history, duties and services so you can always have them available when you are in need of completing a resume. I know that when I go to create a new resume, I often forget many of the jobs and duties that I completed that future employers would appreciate. With this tool, the user puts that information in their profile and then continues to build it and they don't have to try to recall things years and years down the road.

I can go on and on about how wonderful this tool is, but I only attended an hour session. I will definitely be going back for the full day training in the fall.

BP11_2009122_OneMinuteMessage1

BP10_2009122_PeerReviewJoanLourenco

BP8_2009122_Tool#3PhotoPeach

Featuring the Florida Teens Read 2009 Nominations on PhotoPeach




I selected to research PhotoPeach for my third Web 2.0. PhotoPeach is an online slideshow. There are other fancier slideshow Web 2.0 presentations such as animoto, however, after considering my audience, the computers, bandwidth, and the networking system my students and teachers have access to each day, I selected PhotoPeach as the Web 2.0 of choice for my teaching/learning environment. PhotoPeach presentations allows teachers and students to create projects and quiz shows, teach about creating effective presentations, provide a mechanism for students to work collaboratively, provide an alternative for assignments, demonstrate new technology tools and can promote new information and can promote critical thinking skills.

I selected to create a presentation showcasing the books nominated for the 2010 Florida Teens Read since I am in charge of getting a team together for the Battle of the Books competition in April. I am not a techy by any means yet I was able to put a slideshow together on PhotoPeach with ease. This was a plus, to be able to share a multimedia tool that is easy to learn and use.

Creating the online slideshow can be completed with three simple steps. The user has the option of importing photos from a file, Flickr, or the Internet. I was able to import photos in just minutes. I added the captions to each slide and then selected the music from the five sound effects/options offered. I soon had an attractive presentation with music and had options for embedding my presentation into a blog, a MySpace or Facebook account.

One really cool feature of PhotoPeach is the ability to create a quiz with your presentation. The quiz option appears once you are finished editing. To use this tool, first upload your photos or import them from Flickr, or the Internet. You can arrange your photos the way you want them to appear. The next step asks for the quiz title, description, and musical accompaniment. Click finish and your story/slideshow will begin playing. If you need to edit, simply click on the edit wrench in the upper right portion of the presentation.

If you wish to export the story/slideshow, the “public” feature must be selected under owner options. To see a sample and directions for a PhotoPeach Quiz, follow this link:http://paulhami.edublogs.org/2009/09/27/photopeach.quiz .

The slideshow I put together is located on the PhotoPeach website and is named Featuring the Florida Teens Read 2009 Nominations.

References

Hamilton, P. (2009). PhotoPeach Quiz / Free Resources from the Net for EVERY Learner. Free Resources from the Net for EVERY Learner. Retrieved December 3, 2009, from http://paulhami.edublogs.org/2009/09/27/photopeach-quiz

Lardinois, F. (2009). PhotoPeach: Easy to Use, No Frills Photo Slideshow. ReadWriteWeb - Web Apps, Web Technology Trends, Social Networking and Social Media. Retrieved December 3, 2009, from http://readwriteweb.com

PhotoPeach - Fresh slideshows to go!. (2007). PhotoPeach - Fresh slideshows to go!. Retrieved December 3, 2009, from http://photopeach.com

BP9_2009122_FlickrLesson

Upon researching how other teachers have used Flickr in their lesson plans, I came across a teacher that had students research images for a soviet propaganda project. In this assignment, students used the images to analyze how the propagandists used color and slogans to get their message across. I thought of a way to use Flickr that is similar to this. In my freshman cornerstone class, I have my students write a mission statement and they start by creating a collage about themselves. I bring in magazines and the students thumb through them to find things that define them. Instead of using magazines, we can use Flickr and have students surf the Web for photos. This will give them a lot more access to their individual interests.

BP8_2009122_Tool#3(Gig Tide)

This Web 2.0 tool is an online resume builder. As I mentioned in my former blog, in my freshman cornerstone class my students use the dependable strengths building activity to create resumes. The problem is that they typically don't know where to start when creating their resume. They know what they want to include in and they have ideas of what they want to say about themselves in an interview, but they don't know how to visualize it on a piece of paper in a professional manner.

This tool provides several templates for students to choose from and also allows them to individualize their resume at the same time. The tool shows them how to drag and drop information so they can change the look and orientation of their resume if they wish. This tool also has a auto fill function so students don't have to continue to retype or reiterate things, they can just drag and drop their info. It also gives them the opportunity to get a live preview of what their resume looks like so they can make changes before finalizing it.

This tool also helps students put images on their resume. This characteristic will be great in that the students can add the logo they created using Mutapic (the prior tool I discussed in my last blog post). They can also add their picture or other visuals of things that interest them and that can show some of their character to their future employer.

I recall using a resume template when I was in school, but this tool far exceeds the resume builder I used. Of course, times have changed and resumes are going to be fancier and more advanced, but I think this is a great way for students to get practice building a quality resume that employers will appreciate seeing.

The only thing I don't like about this tool is that there is only a 30 day free trial. I would like my students to be able to keep their resumes and to be able to continue to build them as they continue with their lives. However, this will be a great starting point for me to use in my freshman class.

BP7_2009122_Tool#2(Mutapic-Piocture Generator)

Mutapic is a Web 2.0 tool that I would use in my freshman cornerstone class to help my students create logos for their business cards and resumes. As part of this class, we talk about our students dependable strengths to help create a resume with. Some of you may have attended a dependable strengths training before, but what for those of you that haven't, this is a way to talk about past experiences and achievements and share them with other students. In their stories, they include descriptions of what they did and why they were so proud of these accomplishments. After telling 3-4 stories, the students that were listening tell the story teller attributes and characteristics they noticed they repeated in their stories. This gives each student a list of strengths and positive characteristics that they can list on their resume and they are already armed with stories that they can share with their future employers to use as examples of those strengths and characteristics.

After finding their wonderful strengths and attributes, the students will then create a logo to use on their resumes and business cards that help define them and show their personality. Students can be as dole as they want or as creative as they want when generating their logos. This Web 2.0 tool provides templates to help get students started and to aid in their creativity or lack of.

BP5_2009121_SocialBookmarking

I can see how this tool is useful in many ways, but especially for this program. There are so many videos and websites that I have looked at and want to save, but I don't want to cloud my desktop. It is also a way to sort all of the different videos and websites I save. It defeats the purpose of saving videos, websites and links if you don't know how to find them when you want to utilize them. I am excited to learn more about social bookmarking and start utilizing it more frequently.

BP6_2009121_AntiTeaching

As someone that is still new to the technology world, I can't say with complete confidence that virtual learning environments with course management systems is the answer to our educational problems. I know as a teacher, I have several students that I have talked to and found to be very bright, but you wouldn't be able to tell by looking at their GPA's. This is proof that there are problems in our educational system, but I don't know that I am convinced that a virtual learning environment is the solution to the problem.

As Michael Wesch put it in his article, significance is the problem. Students absolutely need to see the significance and purpose in each one of their classes. I have taught mathematics for seven years and it is very obvious that we use math everyday in our lives, but students still ask, "when am I ever going to use this in my life." I assure them that they asked the same question when they were first learning percents and discounts because in the fifth and sixth grade, their parents did all of the shopping and they didn't have first hand experiences of needing to know how to calculate discounts or sales tax. Now that they are in high school and a lot of them buy their own clothes and toys, all of a sudden they see a need for knowing how to mentally calculate a discount and add in sales tax. So things that will be of great significance to students at some point in their lives, may not be significant at the time they are learning it and therefore, they are uninterested and unmotivated to understand the material.

Another problem in mathematics is that a lot of students don't know their simple multiplication facts because they rely on a calculator. Luckily, most cell phones have calculators in them these days and since students do go anywhere without their cell phone, they always have a calculator handy. I am grateful for technology and believe that it is a wonderful tool in education, but at the same time, it is making our students less knowledgeable.

I like the idea of PLE's and what they can do for education. I am very excited about using them in my classroom instruction. I think that initially, it will get the students attention and get them excited about learning and motivated. However, I think that will be a temporary state of mind. As soon as the newness wares off and the next generation comes into high school with having already developed a PLE in elementary school and expanded it in junior high school, learning is going to be just as boring to them, even with all of their technology, as it is for our students now, with limited use of technology.

I hate to sound negative, but I'm just trying to sound realistic. When I first read the 7 things you should know about...Personal Learning Environments, I was very inspired by the scenario that led the article. I was imagining how great it is going to be to start integrating more technology into my lesson plans and how fun and exciting learning is going to be for my students. However, as I thought longer and more into the future, it dawned on me that it is a temporary solution to the ever growing problems of our educational system. Despite those feelings, I am going to move forward with this program and try to learn as much as I can about incorporating technology into the educational setting and continue to grow and learn better teaching practices.

BP4_2009121_Web 2.0 Tools

The Web 2.0 tool I researched is http://www.walletproof.com/. This is a free tool that my students can use to practice balancing their own checkbooks. I was shocked when I recently learned that most of my students have no idea how to balance a checkbook. Many of my students either have a job or are getting jobs and therefore, have money to manage. Not only will this tool teach my students how to balance a checkbook and correctly keep track of their money, but it also teaches them how to budget their money.

One of the activities I am going to complete with my students throughout the semester is letting them choose a career, a house and a car, along with other expenses that they think they will be faced with. For the four months that I have them, we are going to spend a few minutes each class period paying the rent/mortgage, car payment, car insurance, school loans, groceries, utilities, gasoline, just every day expenses in general. I want them to know what it means to live on a budget and how to balance a checkbook so that they can start off their lives with at least that knowledge. We will also talk about those students that don't have enough money in their bank accounts, yet spent it carelessly and now have to pay bounce check fees. I am going to try to make this as realistic as possible for them so they have an idea of what they are getting into when they start making money and take on the responsibility of having to manage their money. I actually really look forward to this and think it is going to be a lot of fun and educational at the same time.

BP3_2009121_Google Reader

At the beginning of the year, my principal approached me and asked me if I would be willing to teach three sections of a new class called freshman cornerstone. This class is designed to help the incoming freshman learn how to take responsibility for their grades and their learning so they can receive good grades and as a result graduate on time.

We decided that the main reason why students struggle in school is because they lack organizational skills. Therefore, as part of this semester long course, we discuss organizational strategies as well as study skills and test taking strategies. We also read a book written by Sean Covey called, 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens.

The best part of teaching this class is that there isn't a real curriculum for it yet. Therefore, as part of my action research project, I am going to use a lot of what I learn in this program to begin creating a meaningful and useful curriculum that will provide these freshman with the tools they need to not only be successful throughout the remainder of their high school career, but also their college career and/or their adventures in the workforce.

The five RSS feed's I selected all relate to the above mentioned class. I will list the feed and a brief description of why I choose that feed.

1. Get Your Game On in Instruction: This feed discuss the use of gaming strategies in education. I am not familiar with how gaming strategies work, but I know my students like to play games and I think I would be able to engage many of my students if I can learn more about it.

2. 15 Productive Uses for a Wiki: We are just starting to learn about wikis and their many uses and benefits. A couple of our professors in past classes, mentioned the use of wikis in staying organized. Again, I would like to learn more about wikis and how they are used as organizational tools and in education in general.

3. Weblogg-ed - Using Weblog and RSS in Education: This feed talks about using Web logs in education. I want to incorporate more blogging in my instruction, but I want to explore how others are using it first. I want to have solid evidence of the benefits of blogging when I present the idea to my district.

4. Study Skills, Information Skills & How to Study Articles Mind Tools: This is a feed about study skills strategies. This is one of the things I cover in the class in preparing the students to succeed in their education.

5. Powell's Books - The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens: This is a feed about the book that we are reading in class. I am reading this book for the first time with my students this year, but have agreed with every part of it so far. Unfortunately, our district could only afford the book, but not the workbook that goes along with it. Therefore, I am trying to find ideas of projects that I can do that will help my students see how they could personally use the 7 habits.

These are the RSS feeds I am starting off with, but I'm sure these will grow quickly as I progress in this program. I like the idea of feeds and I am excited to see how this works for me.

BP2_2009121_Blogger

I have already discovered a lot of benefits in using blogs in education. In our last class, our team had the pleasure of presenting the discussion approach to instruction. In this instruction approach, a discussion platform is used to facilitate learning. The teacher presents a topic and provides media assets that the students respond to. The students post their responses in a blog format on some type of shared discussion platform. In this environment, students get to speak their minds and attempt to persuade their classmates to see their point of view and to agree with them. Of course in this discussion platform, there exists rules and regulations students have to follow, so they can't say whatever they want. However, participating in this type of education environment is a form of blogging and shares many of the same advantages of blogging (Reigeluth and Carr-Chellman, 2009). I will definitely incorporate this type of learning into my lesson plans.

Renee Flierl and Heather Fowler (2007) provide numerous examples of educators that are integrating wikis and blogs in their lesson plans and offer several websites for educators to use as resources. They discuss the importance of incorporating wikis and blogs in education, but as I said above, I'm already sold on the idea and I am anxious to start fusing these Web tools as part of my instruction. My favorite site that Flierl and Fowler examine as a resource to educators is edublogs.org. This is a site that enables teachers and students to easily begin their own blogs.

Although blogging and wikis are a new concept to many educators, I truly believe that it is just a matter of time before it is the norm and a regular classroom practice. The benefits are far too great for educators to pass up.

References

Flierl, R., & Fowler, H. (2007). Educational Uses of Blogs and Wikis. Phi Delta Kappan, 89(3), C3. Retrieved from Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts database.

Reigeluth, C., & Carr-Chellman, A. (2009). Instructional-design theories and models: Building a common knowledge base Volume III. New York: Taylor and Francis.

BP1_2009121_iGoogleScreenShot

My WGO (What's Going On) Tab

My Profile Tab

My FSO Tab

My AR/CBL Tab

My ETC Tab