Final Project

Here is a link to my final project: https://busmanager02.wikispaces.com/

The three R’s Reading Reaction Rubric

            The week in our EME 5050 master’s class, we continued to build our curriculum page. This week we created a rubric for our final project. I choose to create my rubric from http://www.rcampus.com/indexrubric.cfm. This is a user friendly site that guides you through the rubric making process step by step. If you have never created a rubric, this is the site for you. Here is a link to my rubric  http://www.rcampus.com/rubricshowc.cfm?code=X494B4&sp=true&nocache=1290126174624         I found this task to be tedious, but in the end, I think the rubric will help both the students and me with this class project.
       The rubric will help the students in many ways. First, the rubric will help the students understand exactly what is expected of them while they are creating their projects. I will advise my students to keep the rubric with them when they are creating their projects so they can refer back to the rubric to see their progress toward an A. Second, this will help the students manage their time while the due date approaches for their final project.
      The rubric will also help me in many ways. First, this rubric will allow me to grade the students work fast while the students are presenting their work. This will allow me to give the students feedback in a timely manner. Second, this rubric will make sure there is not any confusion about why a student received the grade he/she earned. The rubric is divided into five categories with clearly defined point values. Authentic assessments are a great way to check for a students understanding of a particular benchmark without using a multiple choice style test.

In conclusion, I think that rubrics are a great tool to implement in the classroom. I have used many rubrics in my classroom, but none have been this detailed. I hope to make all my rubrics this detailed in the future.

Draft example project

This week for my EDF 5050 class, we needed to create a draft example project from our curriculum page. Here is a link to my curriculum page: https://busmanager02.wikispaces.com/. This was another assignment that we needed to complete that will help us create our final assignment. This assignment provided many different learning achievements for me.

            First, while completing this assignment, it helped me to create a timeline of how long I should give me students to complete the assignment. It took me about twenty minutes to learn Prezi, from a previous assignment in this class, and I already know how to use PowerPoint. It took me about an hour to gather all my resources. Then it took me about half an hour to put the project together. From this timeline I should try to give my students about two hours in the computer lab at school, and then expect them to spend about half an hour at home to finish up any loose ends.

Second, looking ahead this assignment will also help me next week when I create my rubric for this project. I know have a general idea as to what I am looking for in the students’ projects.

Third, I also know the advantages and disadvantages of using Prezi and PowerPoint, and I will not expect my students to produce an assignment that they technologically cannot create. I also know what the students can create with technology.

            Here is a link to my example Prezi: http://prezi.com/xwti0exhnxsb/copy-of-american-history-question/  Please provide me with any constructive feedback.

Curriculum Page

In this week’s assignment for my technology class, we had to create a curriculum page. A curriculum page is a “teacher-created document containing hyperlinks to teacher-selected Web sites that assist in teaching content-specific standards and objectives.” (Gunter, Gunter, Shelly, 2010, p. 418) Here is a link to my curriculum page, busmanager02 curriculum page. Please understand that this is a work in progress and not my final assignment or something I am going to give to my students anytime soon. This is an assignment that I hope to use at the end of the school year, so not only will this help me in this class, it will also help my students at the end of the year.

            First, I continue to realize how important it is to plan out everything in advance. Even the little things like using computers in a computer lab are sometimes not the easiest things to do. I wanted my students to use Windows Movie Maker, PowerPoint, or Prezi to create a digital story. After creating my curriculum page, I realized I need to check and see if PowerPoint and Windows Movie Maker were installed on all the computers and check to see if Prezi would run properly. Luckily all three programs will run efficiently on the computers in the computer lab. I have been teaching for five years, and the best advice I could give any new teacher would be to make sure you plan for every little thing you can think of to make your life easier. Of course always be flexible when turbulent situations arise in class.

Second, I think is very important to continue to learn new ways of engaging students. I hope to be able to create several more of these projects for my students to use in the future. These types of projects clearly keep the students more engaged and help foster learning compared to a traditional teacher centered approach to teaching.

            Over the next few weeks I cannot wait to add more to this project and use it to help my students learn.

Resources:

Gunter, G. A., Gunter, R. E., & Shelly, G.B. (2010). Integrating technology and digital media in the classroom (6^th ed.). United States: Course Technology, Cengage Learning

Dream

For my masters class this week we are suppose to answer some questions describing our dream assignment that we would create as teachers that would require our students to create a digital story telling project. The questions and my answers are as follows:

1. What kind of digital storytelling project do you wish that one of your (current or future) students would be able to turn in as part of your curriculum?

I envision assigning my project at the end of the school year. I would have my students think about all the different topics that we covered in class and have them create a Prezi presentation about one topic that they wish we would have covered more in depth in class. I would require my students to research a topic that they wanted to learn more about. Then they would need to create a Prezi presentation in order to show the class what they learned. For example, if a student wanted to learn more about the women’s rights movement, then their assignment would be to research the women’s rights movement and create a Prezi presentation to show the class what they learned.

2. Describe the digital storytelling project. What media elements does it include? How would this project relate to your curriculum? (Make sure to tell us the grade level and subject area, so we're clear.)

I currently teach 11^th grade American History in OCPS. This would relate directly to the curriculum because the students would be researching the material that we have covered; only they will need to go more in depth with the curriculum. The current Sunshine State Standards for American History can be found by clicking on this link http://www.floridastandards.org/Standards/FLStandardSearch.aspx  

3.  Thinking back to Wendy Drexler's "Networked Student" video and the concept of "curriculum pages" introduced earlier in Chapters 3 and 8, brainstorm the kinds of Web resources that you would need to have your students review in order to produce the digital storytelling project that you've imagined. (Note: Consider "how to" resources as well as content-specific resources.)

I would have the students use Prezi to create their final project. I really enjoyed creating a Prezi presentation. I found Prezi to be user friendly and I understood how to use Prezi after watching the tutorial. I know my students would not have a hard time understanding how to use Prezi either so this would allow them to concentrate on gathering information for their project. 

4. Summarize the types of Web (and other) resources you would assign for students to access (you can list one or two specific sites if you'd like) and any learning activities that you think you might associate with these resources.

I would require my students to have three resources for their projects. Since our computer lab is in the Media Center, I would require one resource to be a book or journal article found in the Media Center. The other two resources would need to come from an internet source. I would ask my students use these search engines:

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/browse/

http://kids.yahoo.com/directory/

These search engines are great for students. They usually will only find websites that are educationally helpful, and they filter websites that are not relevant for students.

5.  In order to get students to produce the kind of digital storytelling project you've envisioned, are there any resources that you would need to create in addition to existing resources you hope to find on the Web? Briefly tell us about any such teacher-created resources.

I would create my own Prezi to model to the class. Hopefully this would allow the students to see what I am looking for in their projects. However, I am always hesitant to have a model because a lot of times students will copy the model they see and not be creative.

In conclusion, I think this would be a great activity for all classes. I think this would create several teachable moments for the students to reach further into subjects that we normally do not have time for in class. A teachable moment according to our class textbook, Integrating Technology and Digital Media in the Classroom, is “an open window of opportunity for the information to be comprehended in greater detail by students.” (Gunter, Gunter, & Shelly, 2010, p. 328) One of my goals as a Social Studies teacher is to get my students to care more about their work, not just study for a test and forget the information later. This project will hopefully help the students learn more about a topic that they are passionate about and help them learn something they can use later in life.

Resources

Gunter, G. A., Gunter, R. E., & Shelly, G.B. (2010). Integrating technology and digital media in the classroom (6^th ed.). United States: Course Technology, Cengage Learning.

Digital Story Telling

             This week’s activity in my EME 5050 master’s class we had to focus on digital story telling. We had to use either a slide share program that is very similar to PowerPoint or use Prezi to create a story to show how digital storytelling helps our students. Since I am already very perspicacious in PowerPoint, I decided to use Prezi to create my presentation. Prezi was very user friendly. After I watched the two minute tutorial I was ready to complete this assignment. I learned two great ways that I can incorporate this into my classroom.

            First, I learned a great tool to use in my class. I think I will take my students to the media center and have them try this project with a topic from my American History class. We are coming to Industrialization in my American History class. I have never really been able to find something fun and engaging about Industrialization to use with my class. There are about five or six different topics I need to cover about industrialization. I will be able to divide up my class and have each group complete a project using this program. Then each group will share their projects with the class.  Second, I could create my own Prezi slideshows that my students could access from their home computers. This will allow them to get any missing work and allow them to go back and revisit any concept in class they did not understand.

            This was a great project, and I can’t wait to use this in my classroom. I have embedded the Prezi below.
<div class="prezi-player"><style type="text/css" media="screen">.prezi-player { width: 550px; } .prezi-player-links { text-align: center; }</style><object id="prezi_qfr1kjioh-5_" name="prezi_qfr1kjioh-5_" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" width="550" height="400"><param name="movie" value="http://prezi.com/bin/preziloader.swf%22/%3E%3Cparam name="allowfullscreen" value="true"/><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"/><param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff"/><param name="flashvars" value="prezi_id=qfr1kjioh-5_&amp;lock_to_path=0&amp;color=ffffff&amp;autoplay=no&amp;autohide_ctrls=0"/><embed id="preziEmbed_qfr1kjioh-5_" name="preziEmbed_qfr1kjioh-5_" src="http://prezi.com/bin/preziloader.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="550" height="400" bgcolor="#ffffff" flashvars="prezi_id=qfr1kjioh-5_&amp;lock_to_path=0&amp;color=ffffff&amp;autoplay=no&amp;autohide_ctrls=0"></embed></object><div class="prezi-player-links"><p><a title="" href="http://prezi.com/qfr1kjioh-5_/digital-story-telling/%22%3EDigital Story Telling</a> on <a href="http://prezi.com%22%3eprezi%3c/a%3E%3C/p%3E%3C/div%3E%3C/div>

Here is a link as well. http://prezi.com/qfr1kjioh-5_/digital-story-telling/ 

Software?

This is a fake scenario.

            Great news! My principal just told me that he has $1,000 for me to buy one software program. The first thing I had to do is figure out what software is so I checked my classroom textbook Integrating Technology and Digital Media in the Classroom. According to that book on page four, “Software is the series of instructions that tell the hardware how to perform tasks.” (Gunter, Gunter, & Shelly, 2010) Now that I know what software is I am going to check out the three software catalogs that my principal gave me to choose from. I needed to choose from: http://www.academicsuperstore.com/, http://www.journeyed.com/, and http://www.k12software.com/.

            After reviewing all three websites, I told my principal that I would like to download the American History Inspirer from Tom Snyder Productions. This is a great software program from http://www.k12software.com/ that is all about the Civil War. This would be great for my American History class. In Orange County, we are suppose to cover the lead up to the Civil War in three weeks and cover the Civil War in three weeks. This would be great software to implement in those six weeks. This software uses a lot of interactive maps to help the students learn geography. The software also teaches the students the causes of the Civil War and has many interactive games that bring the Civil War to life for the students.  

            Although, the software looks great there are two issues I have with the software. First, this software would only help me during the first six weeks of the year. To remedy this problem, I would try to talk to my colleagues and have them download other interactive software to their computers from different time period in American History. Hopefully, we could create a schedule that would allow us to rotate computers and all of our students can benefit from the collective software. The second issues I have with this software is my computer specifications.

My computer specifications are:

Operating System- Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit

Processor- AMD Athlon™ II Dual-Core Processor for Notebook PCs M300, 2.00 GHz, 1MB L2 Cache, Up to 3.2 GT/s system bus running at AC/DC mode 35 watt

Memory- 3072 MB

Screen resolution- 1600 X 1200 pixels

Graphic Subsystem- ATI Radeon HD 4200 Graphics

Video RAM- 128 MB Display Cache Memory AMD M880G with 128B GDDR2 (sideport memory)

Pre-installed software- HP DVD Play, Cyberlink DVD Suite, Adobe® Acrobat Reader, HP Games Powered by Wild Tangent

Disc drive- CD/DVD

Memory card device- 5-in-1 integrated Digital Media Reader for Secure Digital cards, MultiMedia cards, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro, or xD Picture cards

Please note that mylovie83 in this class is my wife, and we share the same computer, therefore we have the same computer specifications just in case you read both of our posts.

The software specifications are as follows.

* IBM-compatible 486 or higher
* Windows 3.1 or Windows 95/98
* 8 megabytes of RAM (memory)
* 256 color, 640x480 monitor resolution or higher
* 10 megabytes space available on server

When I compared my computer specifications to the software specifications, I realized that I did not know what half of these specifications meant.  I needed to do further reading of the module from my Master’s class and the information in the textbook Integrating Technology and Digital Media in the Classroom to gain more knowledge.  From the readings I learned that hardware is not of much use without good software.  I also learned that there is a lot of valuable software available to engage student learning but that it is important to know if the requirements for the software meet your computer’s specifications. 

I also learned that there are many helpful tools for troubleshooting.  I believe the only problem I would run into in my scenario above is whether or not the school server has 10 megabytes of space available. 

Resources:

Gunter, G. A., Gunter, R. E., & Shelly, G.B. (2010). Integrating technology and digital media in the classroom (6^th ed.). United States: Course Technology, Cengage Learning.

HP Specifications. Retrieved October 10, 2010, from http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/ca/en/ho/WF06b/321957-321957-3329743-3848802-3848802-3999415-4041455.html.

K12 Software- American History Inspirer from Tom Snyder Productions. Retrieved October 10, 2010  http://www.k12software.com/view_details.php?PHPSESSID=ba9b5b15a479b83c3b1d64ff0d3841c6&ID=801