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

Online Identity

           This week in our master’s class we were required to create an online identity. I created an online profile using Google Profile.  You can view my profile by clicking here:  Jonathan C- Google Profile

           Our class text books give some good tips as to how to create an effective webpage. The tips are “web pages should be easy to read, navigate, well organized, easy to interact and easy to locate.” (Gunter, Gunter, & Shelly, 2010, p. 186.)  I do not have much experience with online profiles as I do not have a MySpace, Face book, or other online social networking accounts. I just missed out on that phase in college. After I graduated from college is when all the freshmen were creating all their accounts to link each other together, and after I graduated, I just never really had time to create profiles on the internet. After doing this assignment, I think I will try to create a profile and a website for my students to follow next school year. I think this will help them get to know me and complete their assignments if they are absent. I will not include any personal information on the website, like pictures of my family or my phone number, but I will include a little information about myself. An embarrassing side note: My first year teaching on my syllabus in the contact information section where I wanted to put the school phone number and my extension I accidentally put my cell phone number. The night before the students first day, I checked over the syllabus, noticed the error, and had to change the number on 200 syllabi.

I believe that the level of information teachers give out to students depends on each teacher’s philosophy. I have seen teachers give out their home phone number to parents and students so they can be in contact with each other at any time of day. I have asked those teachers why they give out their personal number, and they all have told me that they want to be there for the students if they need any help. My fear is that most students would abuse the number and call at 2:00 a.m. Those teachers assured me that no students have ever called at inappropriate times. To me those teachers are taking a huge risk in this day and age of giving out their personal number, and I do not think I would do that. I tell my students that I check my school email several times a night and that if they need anything, they should email me, and I will get back to them as quickly as possible. Perhaps in your comments you all can write about how much personal information you feel is appropriate to give to students.

            After completing the assignment I Googled myself to see if there was any information about me on the internet. I was shocked to see that the first Google hit had my current address. It was a website that gave out all of my community’s addresses and how much each house was bought for. This is quite disturbing since I have been teaching for OCPS and any one of my students can Google my name and find my address. I am going to email someone at the real estate company and ask them to take my name off of the website.

          In conclusion, I learned that the internet is a useful tool to connect with students.  It is important for them to be able to find a healthy amount of information about me on the internet, but they should not find any personal information.

References:

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.