Websites reviewed

This past week we spent some time going over what we have learned about HTML and what makes a good (or bad) website. I found it rather interesting to learn some basics of html to create my resume page. Hopefully I will be able to dress it up a bit now that we are learning about more tools in our class. I have always wated to create a website for my carpentry business. Prior to my teaching carrier, I did build homes. In the summer I still do remodeling and would love to have a quality website showing some of the houses I have built in the past. In fact, I did look into becomming a Timberpeg representative to try and line up a timberframe home or two for each summer. So far my schedule has been a bit full to tackle that.
I did find it intereting to look at the new trends in web design. Some of the websites look like magazine covers or old diners. There is a lot of creativity that goes into web design and I really enjoy that aspect of it.

When I first heard Megan Jacoby say with a panic that we had to learn Html, I must admit that I was a little worried. Until last week, I knew nothing about it. We met with our group and started on the group project. Once we dove into it, it was not nearly as bad as I thought. I can see the relevance of learning some basic html. I found a site where the shortcuts are easy to find and use as a reference. Last week I also ordered the textbook for our group and I know that will ease any frustration our group may have on future projects. As a group, we were frustrated that we could not make the first class and I know that it caused some anxiety with our members. We were able to go through the archived class, but there is something about meeting face to face that will never be replaced by computers.
So far, so good.

OK, Hopefully I passed the final exam. By the end, my brain was fried and I know I even forgot to complete one of the questions. As a group, it was nice to go over the final exam and work on it together. Tonight we met one last time to go over some work we needed to finish on the inferential project. I must say that this class helped me increase my speed when working with excel. Now I have to finish up some articles and get moving on that. It is clear to me that I will need help when doing the analysis if my data and I am glad I purchased the textbook for this course. One more course completed! (almost)

Last Stats Class

We are down to the last week of stats class. Though I find it interesting, I do realize that this is not a strong suit of mine. My cousin was always great at this stuff and so was my brother but apparently the gene just skipped me by. I know it is a left/right brain thing and I am fine with that. As far as class this week, we worked on correlation data and figuring out levels of correlation. I am now going to work with some numbers from my classroom to work with the correlation data tables in Excell. I must say that I have been impressed with how useful excell really is. This week is our final, and I admit that I am very nervous about it.

Week 4
I am a bit frustrated that I had to miss class on Thursday. I have a grasp on the first part of the test but I am a bit lost on the correlation material, since I missed that part of the instruction. Thursday was a long night with parent orientation. I had at least 70 parents come through and I had to do my song and dance over 5 times! I was exhausted and did not get out of the building until 8:45. I plan to submit the first half of the test right away, but I may need a bit of help on the correlation material. Although I have read the chapter, I can tell that I am missing out on some important information. Other than that, two more weeks of cross country and then I start the school chess and scrabble club! I did find the section on standard deviation rather interesting.. I finally feel like I get it. I might not be quick at it, but I get it.

This last week was interesting. I felt bad about my post about sitting for too long in class! I know that I just have a hard time staying focused for long periods of time. This week it was interesting learning about standard deviatons and z-scores. It has been some years since I have worked on this sort of thing and I need to work on it alone for a while before I understand it. I was not able to figure out the questions in class as quickly as the others so I am a bit worried about the next benchmark. Another problem I have is understanding the difference between the Experimental data vs the Descriptive data. Even after I read their definitions over and over, I still don't seem to get it right every time.
My group has started working on our data on google docs excel program. It has worked out nicely because we can all work on it remotely at our own schedule. I am still amazed about what you can do with excel! My wife uses it all the time for budgets.. in fact we had our wedding plans and finances on a spreadsheet that she is still very proud of.
RC

Second stats class

I have to admit that I needed the notes on quite a few of the banchmark questions. As I reflect on the evening, I was impressed with what you can do with Excel.. The last time I took a stats class, we were allowed one small notecard for the final. I remember having an entire chapter of furmulas on that little card! I also remember squinting at it attempting to figure out the formula I needed. This week, it was nice of Jim to show us how to use Excel to figure out the variance and standard deviation. I remember having to figure it out with just the calculator. Needless to say, I am very relieved! This is also the first year that I have ever taught math. Math never came that easy for me but I have always enjoyed the challenge, and I can understand what students go through when they have trouble.

Stastics

It looks like it is time to bust out the old stats book that has been collecting dust in the basement! What I like about math is that whatever effort you put into it is directly related to what you get back out of it, and either you get it, or you don't. I look forward to the challenge, and now that the weather is getting cooler, it will be a bit easier to focus. As far as the reading, the first chapter focused on the different types of research and I do feel that it would have been helpful to have the statisics course prior to the start of the action research course. My other reasoning is that to design a test and lesson plans, requires us to be in our classrooms. In the summer some of us do not have access to our classrooms and it provided and extra challenge. It will be a challenging fall!

Correction

I stand corrected. I should have called Linda much earlier to avoid the anxiety I have been feeling about this IRB. Tonight we spent over a half hour on the phone going over things that I had to have done for Thursday night. I must say that she was very helpful!

With this being the last week of this class, I have been talking with a number of students about the course. There seems to be a great deal of confusion and frustration in all of the groups. After reflecting on what has transpired this summer, I feel that this course should have met more often than the three times. Even though it is more difficult to meet over the summer, some more guidance would have been a good thing. Considering the financial costs of this program, I would have expected more guidance and direction.

Summer Grad Class Article Reviews

So far things have been going O.K. with the summer school program. We have done a bunch of work on the article reviews and met to go over the powerpoint projects. What I find frustrating is the difficulty doing school work with busy summer schedules.

This last week was stressful to say the least. I had started my final project in garage band due to the advice of our business teacher. I had a number of problems using garage band and we moved everything into I Movie. I found that to be much easier to use. I also played around with the idea of using Movie Maker with the PC. What I have learned is that it is easier to come up with your script and then make the time of the pictures fit the audio. I would like to keep working on this so that I can teach digital story telling to my students. My class just loved the presentation that I put together. I must say that I really enjoyed this class and will use bits and pieces of it in the future with my students.

This week I spent some time looking into podcasts. Since I enjoy the Science Friday podcasts, I would like to learn more about creating some on my own. I spent some time reading a personal narrative I created about a skating adventure that I had when I was 11 years old. To make a long story short, I fell through the ice and was almost pulled under. I would like to use it to introduce writing students personal narratives in my communications class. I have also spent a lot of time on Garage Band trying to create my final project. I had a lot of difficulty working with the sound since everything got shifted down a second. I was very frustrated to say the least.
I also had trouble uploading my podcast to Gcast. It seams that the more jazzed up I get about using some technology, the more frustrated I get when it does not work! So far I actually like my personal narrative more that I like my presentation with pictures and sound.

I have been thinking a lot about the idea of using storyboards in my classroom. I am excited about the idea but I feel I need to become better at it before I can start using it with my class. I have talked with the Business Education teacher about using storyboard format for her class next year and she was excited about the idea. We are introduced to so many different uses of technology that I just want someone to tell me a few of the best ones that I can use with my class. I felt the Joggle was kind of a pain. It took a long time to get my pictures to Flickr for some reason and then I had trouble getting some sound to go with it. If it is not easy for me to do, how could I use it with my students? For some reason Bubbleshare did a much better job of uploading pictures.

As a group, we decided to do a project on the Ivory Billed Woodpecker. We are just starting on the project, but last week it was a lot of fun attempting to add sound. Since the class I have visited with our business education teacher and she has shown me some amazing software on the Mac. It was funny that the business education teacher just got back from Madison where she was learning about the things we are doing in class. She was very excited about our project and is doing something very similar with the 8th graders starting next year. Now she is teaching me how to add music into the project as well. It is funny that last week I was asked to go with the 8th grade field trip to D.C.. I was thinking about the features for story telling that would be fun to try after taking pictures on the trip. Each year, the students pay a large sum of money to have professional photographers take their pictures but I think a digital story would be much more appealing and have more meaning to them. The students could add video and interviews on the trip and insert all sorts of interesting features by doing a story telling project on the trip.

Week 1, 531

Everybody has a story to tell. In fact, we all have many stories to tell. The more I think about the idea, the more I like it. I have thought of some of my experiences I have had that I would like to create a story about. For example, my father is a musician and I have some good recordings of him at his piano. It would be great to do a slide show with his music in the background. I also have some stories of my own that I would love to create. For example, I would love to create a presentation on our family cottage history. Since the cottage has been in the family since 1938, there is a lot of history and pictures I could share in a story-telling format. I really enjoyed some of the presentations that I have witnessed so far and I have been in the computer lab hounding the business education teacher to show me the ropes in the new Mac lab. Without a doubt, this is some exciting stuff and I look forward to creating something! Once I feel comfortable with the software, then I feel that I could teach it to the students and have them use the software for school projects.

Post 4 525

Last week we went over a number of new resources. I was very impressed with Rubistar which I hope to use with many projects I create in class. We also went over a few sites that have some pretty good webquests. I do like zunal and webquest.org but I would like to suggest teacherweb.com as well. I use that site to host my classroom website and their webquests are usually quite simple to use.
At this point in the course I am very glad that I have been able to learn so many different resources. I have also had a difficult time adjusting to course work, cohort time, and class time. I had not planned to dive into this program until the last moment so I have overbooked myself a bit. Being the cross country coach, chess coach, ski club coordinator, carpentry club teacher, and still trying to be a good father to my two children has been a challenge to say the least. If I had known that I was going to start this program earlier, I would have dropped some of those extras from my life. Needless to say, I feel maxed out!

Week 3 course 525

Last week, we started with a review of some resources that are available. I could see using the BrainPop in my sixth grade science curriculum, but the other websites seemed like they would not be very useful for me as a sixth grade teacher. The next topic we discussed was the article about the cyberbully from New Berlin. There are always going to be creeps out there and this was another example of why we need to remind students to never put something on the internet that they would not show their parents! I am also torn about the social networking as a teacher’s idea. Should we as teachers allow students access to our Facebook accounts and have them as our friends so that they know that we can view their sites? If we did that, students would know that we are watching them and they keep them clean. Or, are we going to look like creeps for viewing student’s Myspace accounts. I have opted for blocking students from my social networks just as a precaution. However, I am torn on this because somebody needs to monitor what some of these kids are doing on the net or it becomes too tempting to abuse. It is kind of like giving students shop tools and not teaching them how to use them safely.The last thing that we did was to go to a professional online network. I found it interesting to be in the network and I checked out some other sessions on the environment that were going on. I have taken a course through Blackboard and I think that it is an amazing to use tools that spark conversation and build on thoughts and ideas!

Week 3 course 525

Last week, we started with a review of some resources that are available. I could see using the BrainPop in my sixth grade science curriculum, but the other websites seemed like they would not be very useful for me as a sixth grade teacher. The next topic we discussed was the article about the cyberbully from New Berlin. There are always going to be creeps out there and this was another example of why we need to remind students to never put something on the internet that they would not show their parents! I am also torn about the social networking as a teacher’s idea. Should we as teachers allow students access to our Facebook accounts and have them as our friends so that they know that we can view their sites? If we did that, students would know that we are watching them and they keep them clean. Or, are we going to look like creeps for viewing student’s Myspace accounts. I have opted for blocking students from my social networks just as a precaution. However, I am torn on this because somebody needs to monitor what some of these kids are doing on the net or it becomes too tempting to abuse. It is kind of like giving students shop tools and not teaching them how to use them safely.The last thing that we did was to go to a professional online network. I found it interesting to be in the network and I checked out some other sessions on the environment that were going on. I have taken a course through Blackboard and I think that it is an amazing to use tools that spark conversation and build on thoughts and ideas!

Week 2 course reflection, 525.

Last week we learned about another useful website called Filamentality. I could see using the site in the future and I have bookmarked it. It allows you to plan different lessons using the internet and links you with the standards for each of the lessons. After playing around with it for a while, I realize that I need to spend more time exploring it. I did look into some lessons on insects and found some interesting interactive lessons that I could use. I also created a hotlist during class and found that it was very easy. However, I will continue to use my classroom website to store my web addresses since my students are used to using it.
We also spent some time on the online quiz creation sites. The one that I intend using was the ClassMarker. It seems to be the easiest to use and quickest to create. I do not have a lot of time to create quizzes but ClassMarker makes it easy. I am going to attempt making a quiz today for my students that goes along with the webquest that they are working on.
During class my team had to work on QuizCenter which is now part of Discovery School. I was not able to use the site to create a quiz and you need to subscribe to United Streaming to be able to access it. I am a huge fan of United Streaming and I use it often. I think an entire class could be dedicated to the use of United Streaming and the other tools that it provides teachers.

Week One

I must say that the Smartboard system is a great tool for teaching. To see it being used in our class was a welcome site. Ever since starting this masters program, I have wanted to have one in my room more and more. Students really react to them and behave just to touch the screen and reveal answers. It is also a great tool for every subject matter that we teach in schools. I want one badly!
There are so many new websites out there that I have trouble keeping track of them all. That is why I really need my delicious account. I started one about six months ago and use it all the time now. I used it to keep track of the websites I want to save from our last course as well. I also subscribe to teacherweb and my website has a links page which is filling up fast. I was very thankful that we went over the delicious site and I was able to add Thinkfinity.
The most valuable resource from class was Thinkfinity. Not only did it provide great lessons, there was a shortcut to standards which were easy to access. There are also interactive lessons which I can link to my links page. The lesson planner was also easy to use. Since I have only been to the site a few times, I know I have a lot to learn about how to use and navigate the site but I can tell that it is a keeper.