Using Authentic Writing

Group 2 presentation

1. Voicethread for authentic writing
Based on what I have seen I would be able to incorporate voicethread into an authentic writing assignment during a storyboarding process. Small groups of students would brainstorm, outline, script, and storyboard. Students would upload the storyboard and each would post a comment to the storyboard using the pen feature. This would allow each of the students to offer input during this process as individuals. This could also be done for the groups script.

2. Classroom 2.0 classroom blogging
I have to say that Classroom 2.0 was one of the most interesting parts of the day. On this site you are able to to set up a class blog, create student accounts, and do this in a manner that would be private only to members. I would be able to keep student information private to the class and allow only members that I invite to join. This site takes care of almost all issues or concerns that I originally had about setting up a class blog for students.

EIT Day 5

EIT Day 4

Today was another good day. We started the morning with working in our groups. I thought we were very productive. It is nice that we are doing a project like this and I am sure that I will be able to use some of what we produce, but I think the amount of time that it is taking us to produce many of these things may not be practical on a regular basis while teaching. On the other hand,I suppose most of this could be done during the summer.

We took a couple of tours today. The first was through the College of Education at UNI. The second tour was to a server farm at Team. This tour was very interesting and informative, but it did use up quite a bit of the day.

Things we learned about.
We looked at using Jing to capture desktop images and video that you are then able to share with others. This was very cool. You are able to capture directions of how to do something specific with voice directions. These can be stored and shared later. We also went through video editing with iMovie. It was nice to go over iMovie since we are using a different version than I usually work with. We looked at cropping and cutting video, adding transitions, titles or text, video effects, and some audio. After that we were able to plan and film our videos for the final project.

EIT Day 3

Today was very productive. We were able to work in our groups a lot today. I felt that our group was able to come to a consensus and lay down a plan to move forward. We also worked on podcasting today. The class used GrageBand to create these podcasts. Our group was able to create two approximately ten minute podcasts based on Internet piracy which is apart of our digital citizenship topic. They are GREAT! I will try to post a link later. Tomorrow, we are planning to work with creating movies.

The Copyright Pirate I

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The Copyright Pirate II

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At the beginning of the day, we looked at using VoiceThread. This site is fantastic. You are able to post pictures and video then create comments that are attached to the pic/video. These comments can be video, audio, or text. You can even have the site call your phone and record comments through the phone. One way we plan to use this site is by having students create a video of a role-playing a situation. Students would post the video and each would be able to post a comment those videos. Another idea that I have is to use this for storyboarding. A small group would be able to create a storyboard, upload the images and post comments using the pen tool and voice recording.

In all, this was a very good day in class. I am learning a ton of new things.

EIT Day 2

Today was day 2 of Emerging Instructional Technologies. This morning was used to focus on Ning, Ning in Education, and Classroom 2.0. Steve Hargedon, the creator of Ning in Education , skyped in to discuss social networking as a tool for collaboration between educators.

We also began working in our groups for a project that will incorporate emerging technologies. Our group has decided to focus on Digital Citizenship as a topic. This comes from International Society for Technology Education's (ISTE) National Educational Technology Standards (NETS).


The rest of the day was spent getting to know and going to different places in SecondLife. I can see how people could get very caught up in this.

First day of EIT

Today I attended the first day of Emerging Tech. I think it was a good day. The only bad part was the drive. Coming home it took me 45 minutes to get through Cedar Rapids. That was on top of the 1 hour drive.

In class we learned about Google docs which I am very excited about using this school year. One idea that I have is to use docs to collect info about students at the beginning of a each trimester. I would also like to try to use them for short quizzes to check for student understanding. Because I can easily see information in categories, I can quickly identify whether students need to review specific content.

Another item that we looked at today was Google pages. This was a nice version of easily creating a web page and being able to add links, content, and gadgets for more depth.

I am also excited about using wikis this coming school year. I would like to set up a class wiki in which students would be able to add and edit information specific to projects they will be working on. In the past, I have had students keep a journal on specific steps, processes, things they found interesting or just plain liked or disliked about their projects. I think this may be a excellent supplement or possible replacement to the journal.

In all, today was a good day and I am looking forward to the rest of the week (minus the drive).

What do you see on the Horizon

Reflection from Horizon Report
The idea of public schools being threatened is not at all that uncommon. Each section that I teach, my classes have a discussion which leads to a formal researched debate about the future of the internet. One of the topics is "Will the internet make schools disappear?" Most students can not even believe that it is possible at the beginning. However, after considering building costs, utilities, maintenance, equipment, transportation, lunches, salaries, and most importantly, student safety, it is not at all hard to imagine a district buying computers for every student and providing technical support while still saving money.
Just like with school there could be a curriculum that students follow and they would be able to advance to the next level when they are ready; no waiting for other students to catch up. For socialization, students would have structured activities such as dances. Sure many kids would not have the quantity of faces to see everyday, but the ones they would see will be from neighborhoods, family, religious groups, and so on. Many kids who play sports are also in club sports. Is it that unrealistic to imagine?

8th Grade Applied Technology

I will use this page as a supplement for student access to information and class content.

Course Rationale:
In the world we live in today our technology is changing at a rapid pace and we need to know how it will impact us as life long learners. Students in this course will do a variety of projects that will link skills from our other core courses with the use of computer skills that will help them broaden their knowledge base dealing with online research, video files, and audio files to use in their presentations. Students will research and develop two multimedia presentations, using two different programs, and deliver a presentation to their peers. While better understanding new trends in technology, students will benefit in the present classes and in their future endeavors.

Aim:
Students will develop their technological skills for life long learning and be able to apply their skills to real world situations by developing a multimedia project for classroom presentations.

Course Syllabi

Prensky Article

Reflection on Prensky reading
Prensky talks about inventing computer games to teach Digital Natives. I have watched the result of this type of learning within a classroom and believe that it can work to some extent. Students lean about designing, building, and marketing a house through an online game. They have to receive a loan, stay within their budget, and sell the house for a profit. Many of the students enjoyed the game style of learning during this unit, but at a certain point the program just becomes doing the same thing over and over again. While I know students remember more from repetition, I also know that many of those students became bored with the program because it did not provide the next level. Once you beat a game, as many do now within a couple of days, what’s next? I think the game approach to education must think of the “what’s next” in order to not only capture their attention but keep students interested long term.

While I do believe this is a very interesting and possibly very effective approach, I also believe that students are going to want something to follow up with that is relevant to their own lives. This could be applying what they have learned from the game to create something they see as valuable. The most popular unit in my class is when students plan, film, and edit a movie. Most say they like it so much because they actually “get to do something, unlike in other classes.”