Looking Back and Looking Ahead

Opening up to Technology

I must admit when I began my "Technology in the Classroom" course I was quite reluctant about having to take this class.   Although I  understood it's necessity, I found it intimidating.  Prior to this course,  I had used some tech tools to complete various assignments in my courses, such as google to search different topics and power point to create presentations but that was about the extent of my technology experience.   So coming into this class and being forced to use so many tech tools felt quite overwhelming.  But I am a person who enjoys learning new things, so I just jumped in and decided I  would make it a pleasurable experience.  After I decided to open up to the new tech tools being introduced I found so many of them very beneficial and extremely fun to do.  

My favorite tech tools

There were many tech tools I enjoyed using once I conquered how to use them.  I found some had very few instructions on the process of making the projects, such as Blabberize and Glogster, but I was able to find many video tutorials on YouTube for any tech tool I was interested in.  Although there were some I  enjoyed more than others.  One of my favorite tools to use was Thinglink, I truly enjoyed being able to creatively express my thoughts and knowledge on a topic in such a graphic way.  Another tool I was quite surprised that I enjoyed was Twitter.  I have always stayed away from social media sites, being a rather private person, I never liked being that accessible to others.  On Twitter, finding various educational professionals and organizations to follow was very educationally stimulating.  I found myself being on this site until the wee-hours in the morning, clicking from educational site to educational site.  I realized that this site could be quite addictive.  I eventually had to develop a separate log book to list sites I'd like to revisit at a later date.  This awakening to technology gave me the incite to realize that technology can and needs to be used in my planning, developing and implementing of curriculum, activities and projects in the classroom.

Technology Today

I've always found myself as a open-minded person, but this class made me realize that my own insecurities in using technology was not allowing me to provide the tools necessary for our 21st century students to expand and grow in a method in which they have grown up on.  Just as my own children have technology in their system (one is a computer programmer and the other just graduated in computer graphics), children today have grown up with these tech tools from a very young age (as soon as they are able to hold a cell phone).  To provide my students with a quality educational environment and curriculum, I must be knowledgeable and experienced in the tech tools that will allow their growth and learning to be done in a global classroom.

Blabbing on Blabberize

Blabbing on Blabberize

Blabberize is the third tech tool I chose to investigate.   Blabberize is an online service that allows you to take a photo or drawing and make it talk.  It's a fun way to enhance your photos and drawings.
It allows you to bring them to life.

Blabbing made easy

The actual process of making a blabber is relatively easy, once you know how to.  The problem with making one, is that they really don't give you much instructions.  My initial attempt, I found to be quite frustrating because they didn't tell you what to do with the various screens that came up.  To find out how to manipulate the Blabberize site, I went to YouTube and reviewed a tutorial on it.  After I completed the tutorial, the process was rather easy.   You first need to have a photo or drawing already loaded to your picture file or have one from the web that you want to use.  After you have loaded it to the Blabberize site, then you need to position where you want the mouth to be.  One large bubble with eight smaller bubbles are used to outline the mouth.  You just place your mouse over the bubbles and place them in position around the mouth area.  There is one final bubble at the bottom of the others that is used to determine how low you want the mouth to open.  Once the mouth is positioned where you want it, you move on to the next screen to record what you want to say.  Now once on this screen you have three ways to record - by your internal microphone, a pre-recording or by phone in.  The easiest way is to use the internal mic.  Now you just talk, check your recording and then save.   Now you have a Blabber.

Blabbing in the classroom

As an example of a blabber, I chose to use it as a homework reminder. a fun way to assure that the students remember their homework assignments.  If you have a wikispace site you can set it up so parents can also review what is required for homework.  This tech tool can be used to make several (eg. book reports, biographies) projects fun.



   http://blabberize.com/view/id/1092019

Working with Wordle!

What's a Wordle?

Wordle is a tech tool which generates a "word cloud" from text that you input.  The more you use a word, the more prominent it appears.  It allows you to alter your word cloud by changing the fonts, layouts, and color schemes.  Since your Wordle is derived from words, it should be obvious that it's use would involve language and literacy.

Wordle's use.

I found Wordle to be an extremely easy tech tool to use, you just type in the content you want and out pops a word cloud.

Wordle in the classroom.

My example of it's use in the classroom consist of taking a story(Just A Little Bit More) from a 1st grade reader and inputting the reading into Wordle.  The story line consisted of repetitive mention of the characters in the story.  I used the word cloud to play a character word find game with the children.  We used the Wordle as a "talking point" (discussion) tool.  (eg. Who do you think is the main character and who is the least significant character?)  I found that this same word cloud could be used to have the children find the verbs (action words) and then write sentences using those verbs.  With the Wordle the teacher has the ability to guide the word search in any direction the content allows and would definitely by beneficial in the classroom.

Just A Little Bit More by Ann Tompert

Tech Tools

Learning, Implementing, and enjoying Glogster!

Over the last few months I've been learning a great deal about various technology tools in my TIE300 course.  Some I liked and thought I might definitely use them again, others not so much.  For my course I was asked to choose three to learn, implement and reflect on there uses in the classroom.
My first choice is Glogster. 

What's a Glogster?

Glogster is an on-line multimedia poster tech tool.  Glogster allows teacher's to create private, safe virtual classrooms with safe logins and passwords.  They are able to design curriculum based projects where students can collaborate on projects and yet work on them independently at any time.  Glogster provides students a platform to express their ideas, artistic creations and display their knowledge with text, photos, videos, graphics, drawings and data attachments.  It provides an adaptable and innovative learning environment for students to independently express themselves regardless of their learning styles.  I believe this site allows students imagination and creativity to lead their learning.

Is Glogster difficult or not?

Initially I found Glogster to be a little confusing, there was very     little instructions.  But after playing around on it, after awhile I found it to be quite easy to use.  On the other hand, I found the embedding process was quite difficult and confusing.  Again there was little if any instructions on how to embed my Glogster to my blog.  I basically had to do it with the trial and error process.
As you can see I finally got it to embed but I couldn't resize it once it was there (due to my inexperience).  But it's there!

How to Use it in the Classroom.

As an example of a Glogster and it's use in the classroom, I designed a "Theme" bulletin board poster.  This virtual poster allows the teacher to post each week's theme, for parents to view what their children are learning each week.  The teacher is able to post the learning concepts, poems, songs, and activities relating to the theme of the week.  It also can have a home/school connection section to inform parents of activities to be done at home.  This could be very beneficial for those parents who don't have the opportunity to visit the school much but want to remain engaged parents.
I believe this interactive multi-media tool will be quite beneficial in the classroom.

http://carlarwilliams8.edu.glogster.com/the-five-senses-glog/

Professional Learning Networks

 

 

To Tweet or Not to Tweet?

 

 
I must admit that my professional learning network assignment for my TIE300 course initially gave me the flux!  Signing up on Twitter, following other education professionals and organizations, and tweeting or retweeting about resources, I found to be quite overwhelming.  After my initial apprehensions with learning the lingo and understanding the practice of following someone, I found twitter to be truly interesting, enlightening, and beneficial (both professionally and personally).
Tweet On!

Actually, for a lover of learning like myself, Twitter can be quite addictive.  I found myself fluttering from person to person, organization to organization, and site to site.  I've spent a many endless night just examining educational sites, articles and tutorials.  Having the ability to connect to professional educators from all over the world, view live presentations and webinars, and obtain articles, lesson plans, and activities that cover across every learning domain and 21st Century technology, I found exciting.  I'm able to learn as I seek the knowledge, methods and experiences necessary to teach. 

 

 

Many of the professionals and organizations, I follow, provide an abundance of beneficial information and resources, but my favorite sites are by stay at home moms. They can stand shoulder to shoulder with many early childhood educators.  I find their early educational ideas and activities to be fresh, innovative, and just plain fun.  Some have early childhood education backgrounds, others don't, but all seem to display a love for learning along with their children and often expand their own knowledge by becoming certified or returning to college to complete a degree in ECE.  This is something I have a personal connection with.  One of my favorites is the "Kids activities Blog", by Holly Homer, which was posted by Teach Preschool @Teach_Preschool.  The most recent post was 10 Best Nature Apps for Kids by Marnie Craycroft.  This site has information and resources for parents and educators. The activities are categorized by age and learning areas. 

I find their activities are shared from a place of love - the love they have for their children and their parental desire to enhance, promote, and stimulate positive growth and development in their children.

As with all parents, they seek to find ways to increase their children's ability to succeed in life and are willing to share their own successes and failures and display the challenges that are involved with being an engaged parent -  I applaud our students true 1st teachers.

 

From Tweeting to Chatting

 

It's perfectly natural to want to get in on the conversations you see the educational professionals, parents, and students posting about.  So this Wednesday at 8:00 p.m., I jumped in the #ptchat nest.  The topic was, "Introverts in the Classroom".  I was quite intimidated about joining in on the conversation but they provided a link to the seven questions that would lead the discussion.  I found this to be quite helpful, since the actual chat moves extremely fast.  The previewed questions allowed me to have a response ready for when the question were posed, enough time to read what others were saying and note the resources they were posting.  The hour flew by, I was tired but I completely enjoyed it.  I do intend to build my twitter nest with more educational twigs from other chat trees.

I couldn't get my screen shot to save to my computer, so I just took a few photos on my iPhone. 

My tweets on #ptchat, discussing "Introverts in the Classroom".

 

 

 

Forty-five tweets, one hundred fifty eight followings, and thirty two followers later, I found the overall social media experience of tweeting and chatting to be educationally, professionally, and personally extremely beneficial and FUN!

Mining for Strangers.

Digital Mining

For my technology course, at National Louis University, my instructor had us go digital mining for information on a perfect stranger.  A fellow student and myself were assigned the name of a stranger and requested to investigate them on the internet.  Just by Googling their name we were able to dig up all sorts of personal information on that person.  With just a few more clicks on the keyboard, we obtained their age, birthdates, occupation, salary, residence, relatives and many more priceless personal nuggets.

Digital Excavation

As with any excavation, tools are required.  Our digital mining tools of choice consisted of various search websites.  As I previously stated, our search began with Google which provided a list of other sites that led to more in-depth information on our female target of interest.  With each site searched we were able to auger our way through her life.  Pinterest.com gave us a picture of our subject and on  twitter we obtained her occupation and examples of her professional experiences and interest.  On Illinois-teachers.findthedata.com, we retrieved her place of employment, years of service, salary and educational history.  Instantcheckmate.com gave us her birthdate, age, current residence (also her previous residences) and close relatives, which allowed us to obtain the same information on each of them.  If we chose to pay a fee, we would have been able to obtain all of the personal information listed below:

     Civil Judgments                    Old Phone Numbers               Foreclosures

Corporate Affiliations          Email Addresses                     Issued SSN

Water Craft Owned              Tax Liens                               Aircraft Owned

UCC Filings                         Florida Accidents                   Sexual Offenses

Phone Numbers                    Professional Licenses             Neighbors

Properties Owned                 Hunting/Fishing Permits        Business Associates

Voter Registration                Weapons Permits                    And Much More!

With Chicago.blockstopper.com we were able to obtain a picture of  her residence, the taxes, square footage of the home and lot along with it's parcel number.  Every search site divulged more and more personal gems about a person we've never seen, met or talk to.  It allowed us to tunnel our way through her life, making it an open book.   

No longer a Stranger

This investigative experience left me feeling that my assigned subject was no longer a stranger. Her life unfolded with every search site we examined. This caused me to reflect on all the information that computers and the internet have made available to anyone willing to dig.  Each time you make a purchase, apply for a job, and sign into a new website, you leave information about yourself.  Every bit of personal information you submit, leaves a permanent impression (digital footprint/tattoo) on this global social media environment.  Thought and care must be taken with every transaction, and each time you log in and are required to divulge your personal information.   I found this assignment to be very enlightening, valuable and yet disturbing.  I believe that it definitely would be a good topic to discuss with students, making them aware of the significance their digital tattoo can have on their life.

SAMR, what's that?

My first webinar
There are so many things I'm not familiar with in technology.  Grasping the technology of today, comprehending its various educational uses and implementing them in the classroom are often times quite overwhelming for me.  Recently, my understanding of the digital tools available and their applications were made clearer at the SAMR webinar I attended, which was hosted by ICE (Illinois Computing Educators) and facilitated by Nicole Zumpano.  Susan Oxnevad, an Instructional Technology Facilitator, Ed. Tech Consultant, Blogger and webinar host, was the presenter.

SAMR explained

Source: http://images.search.yahoo.com

Ms. Oxnevad explained that SAMR, a Model of Technology Integration, was designed to define the levels of educational instructions and digital tools educators use in the classroom.  The SAMR model consist of four phases (Substitution, Augmentation, Modification and Redefinition), which are divided into two stages (enhancement and transformation).  The enhancement stage is comprised of digital tools that merely substitute (word pad vs. paper and pen) or augment (word pad with spell check) the traditional tools used for a specific task.  This stage is considered "teaching below the line", meaning that there is no learning gained within the process.  With the transformation stage the educator is able to introduce digital tools that modify (www.wikispaces.com) and redefine (www.Thinglink.com and Google Docs) how students represent and display their knowledge of the learning task.  Within this stage, multimedia plays an important role, the teacher is able to design lessons (guided by questions, transitions and rubrics) based on the capabilities of the technology available and the students are able to design, invent, and create projects based on their individual interests and learning styles.  Through digital tools, such as Wikispaces and Thinglink, students are able to discuss and collaborate on projects, allowing them to extend their learning beyond the classroom 24/7.

Digital Tools in Education

Source: http://images.search.yahoo.com

Wikispaces, a free website, allows educators to easily add, remove and edit content, serves as an effective tool for collaborative tasks and provides a variety of features to support all levels of technology integration.  Thinglink (also free) allows users to turn any image into a multimedia launcher by creating "hot spots" on the image that links them to any location on the web.  These digital tools are able to significantly redesign the learning task being presented.

My overall webinar experience
My overall experience with the SAMR webinar was excellent.  I found the information to be invaluable, easy to comprehend, and definitely helpful.  The format (listening and following along) was perfect due to the volume of information presented within an hour.  As Ms. Oxnevad stated, as educators our goal should be to move up the SAMR ladder of educational instruction from one level to the next, striving to teach above the line.  I look forward to exploring her instructional sites and implementing the tools supplied to enhance not only the students learning by my own.