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| 3.1 | This was
certainly an interesting
and very important project. As more and more information goes on line,
and cloud computing becomes the norm, it's not enough to just know how
to search for an utilize web resources: one must have the ability to
add to the Internet as well. For every brilliant lesson plan/activity
on the Internet, there are probably 100 equally brilliant lesson
plans/activities that could easily be shared if only they were uploaded. I've made a few web pages before, but I've always used website building programs, like the ones associated with Yahoo and, many years ago, Geocities. Using NVU reminds me of Microsoft Publisher, which is a program I use frequently, but I'm looking forward to trying Dreamweaver or other programs of that nature. I feel that this site is one that I will continue to tweak as my skills grow. I am a problem-based learner, so I'm more successful in expanding my knowledge base when I'm trying to solve a specific problem or achieve a certain goal. I'm positive that this site will allow me to learn more about html and creating web pages in general. Right now I'm experimenting with using a seperate page for my reflections, but I need to make the anchors work so that one doesn't need to scroll down the page to see, for example, the reflection for 3.4. Professionally, as an AV/IT person, I need to be able to showcase my skills, knowledge, and accomplishments in a technological manner. If I ever leave my current position, it will give me an advantage in my job market to be able to include a url on my resume. |
| 3.2 | While I
have not
used Inspiration numerous times, I have seen it in action when helping
students in computer class. I also found many lessons using
Inspiration for activities like matching games and creating picture
books, which was a surprise to me since I thought the program was just
for creating graphic organizer diagrams. That makes me want to play
around with it more, but I also want to try and adapt some of the
lessons so they can be used on an interactive whiteboard. In terms of deciding on a lesson and writing it up using the ASSURE format, I struggled. My initial plan was to randomly select some Georgia standard and make up a lesson. My first attempt was something involving The Oregon Trail with 6th grade students, and my second attempt was a noun and verb activity for first grade students, but I'm not a 6th or 1st grade teacher so any lesson plan I wrote would never be useful to me. I do, however, want to teach the staff about Google Docs, so my hope is that the the lesson is something I can use This project was not uploaded in a timely manner, which frustrates me since I wrote out the lesson a week ago, created the Inspiration file late last week, but am only now uploading it, which means I am not budgeting my time correctly. I'm also having issues formating my text so that the font is Georgia, so that is something I will have to work on. |
| 3.3 | I've heard
the term WebQuest used, but I didn't really understand what it entailed
until making this webpage. I associated WebQuests more with scavenger
hunts and students following a trail of links to find facts, so this
was a learning experience. The three governors project fits very well
with the website selection guidelines put forth by Lamb (2006),
especially in terms of "current information not available in other
formats" (p. 137) and "first-hand information not available elsewhere"
(p. 137). Most likely the youtube video would not be available to the
students without the use of the Internet because it's unlikely the
teacher tapes every news event on TV, and the Digital Library of
Georgia has a wide variety of first-hand historical media that most
students would not be able to access unless they were able to
physically visit the many museums and institutions the Library pulls
from. In terms of technique, I tried to apply skills learned for the WebQuest to my general MEDT page. I created a navigational menu at the top of my Reflections page, created anchors by each of my reflections, and linked the numbers back to the top. I am also increasing the font size of all first letters at the start of paragraphs. I would also like to make a banner for one of the pages and practice embedding video or audio. Lamb, A. (2006). Building Treehouses for Learning (4th ed.). Emporia, KS: Vision to Action. |
| 3.4 | This was a very comfortable
assignment for me because I've used Google Forms and Spreadsheets
before. My school uses a Google Form/Spreadsheet to track overall
attendance for the school nurse (as started during the Swine Flu scare,
the idea being if X% of the children were out the school would close,
but we never reached that theoretical X percent. ) I also use the
spreadsheets in my personal life. My family will be traveling to
Germany for spring break, so instead of endless emails of revised
attachments I created a spreadsheet that everyone in the family can
access. I really want to stress this aspect to the teachers at my
school: for communal documents, it's so much easier to use something
like Google Docs than to keep sending updated versions to everyone. The only real issue I have with forms is that it's easy to miss how visually pleasing they can be. I had to remind myself to click on the link to see the form live so I wouldn't miss out on the formatting people choose. I actually liked how a fellow classmate and I had the same idea of using books/reading as the topic for our forms. I hope to do more with forms in the future. |
| 3.5 | I do want to try and merge this
reflections page with the home page and rework the banner, but to be on
the safe side, I'll post my WebQuest link and reflections using my
original format. The WebQuest was one of those projects were I felt I was at an advantage and disadvantage simultaneously by not being a regular teacher with a classroom of children. The advantage was that I didn't feel locked or focused on any one subject. If I were a 2nd grade teacher I probably would have felt some pressure to make something appropriate for 2nd graders, but since I work with adults I just picked something fun -- my cup of coffee was resting on a stack of epidemiology text books, so I picked a pandemic. The feel the disadvantage when trying to judge what is age appropriate. About mid-way through I did a Google search for 1918 webquests, and I was happy to see that some of the links I picked were in that webquest as well, because I was worried about whether my links were too technical or not technical enough. I'm also not 100% sure what class would use my webquest. I did not make it technical because I don't see it as being used in a science class; I'm thinking more like 11th grade, U.S. history class. I don't know how I'll be able to use webquests in my workplace. I'm working with my boss to get the teachers and administration up to date and informed about copyright laws, so maybe I could make a webquest related to that and put it on our intranet. |
| 3.7 |
Copyright is a topic near and dear to my heart because my realm is media. From my observations and interactions with teachers, I see the following attitudes towards copyright (keeping in mind that this does not reflect all teachers.) * Teachers feel they are in copyright compliance because they follow the rules for the older, more traditional materials. They would never copy a whole book, but the internet and explosion of media has created a sort of free for all. * Teachers believe that anything that occurs within the school counts as “educational” and is therefore covered under free use and/or as long as no one pays for it, it counts as free use. * Teachers who do try to follow copyright mistake the guidelines for laws and believe it is illegal to use, for example, 31 seconds of a song, when really the guidelines have no force of law behind them and are only suggestions. They are very good suggestions, but still, are not the law. Copyright is difficult because very few people want to be the copyright police. Money is tight so buying movie licensing is tough, yet no one wants to be the person who takes movies away from kids. Yes, it is highly, highly unlikely that anyone would be sued for copyright infringement, but, if it is a part of AUPs then it needs to be as enforced as any other item on an AUP. The difficulty I have with enforcing copyright at my school is that while administration talks about how it is important to follow copyright, if I were to refuse to do a project, I don't think that would go well. |
| 3.8 | One summer at work I had an
intern with Asperger's syndrome. He was highly functioning but still
did best when tasks were broken down into minute steps, steps that most
of us would take for granted or assume were a given. When I was
cleaning my desk last week I found a copy of some instructions I had
written for him on how to help people, and included on the list were
such items as "Pause at the door. If they don't look up immediately,
wait 5 seconds and then knock so they'll look up. Don't talk until they
look up." I remember that when I gave that to him and we went through
it, he had to write "on the door frame" as a note as to where to knock. Breaking tasks down gives us a way of seeing actions through different eyes. I do go on automatic a lot when working on a computer. I have to break tasks down somewhat when writing manuals, but never to this extent before. I may have gone a little too much into detail, but I did get a fair amount of practice clicking on forms since I had to analyze my movements so closely. |
| 3.9 | At first I considered using the
scenario about the little boy with speech and motor disabilities, but
that felt like cheating since we have several programs at my school for
those issues and I could basically just shout down the hall, "Hey, what
are you using?" This is an odd lesson for me because I am surrounded by AT and don't even notice it anymore. There is an occupational therapist department at the school, so all of the classes see an OT at least once but probably a few times a week. There are voice amplification systems in all of the classrooms. I have Dragon Naturally Speaking and Read & Write Gold in my software library. I'm scared to look for a job anywhere else because I'd probably be forced to sit in a chair (here, to help with my back and my ADD, one of the OT gave me a giant exercise ball to sit on, been using it for 4.5 years, never want to go back to a real office chair). All that being said, of course teachers must make every effort possible to give each child the best education. The key is to incorporate the best AT for the job and to incorporate it in a fashion that does not draw attention to the user. |
| 3.10 | I appreciate the intent behind
behavioral objectives because, as already mentioned, there is no way to
check if someone has "learned" something. No device like a turkey
thermometer that pops up with a student "knows" a concept. Yet it's
also difficult to break an activity down and identify what, exactly, is
expected of the student. I feel my behavioral objective is overly
wordy, and that is even after much parsing and editing. I wanted to
correctly define each aspect so there is no ambiguity, but I didn't
want to veer too much into task analysis territory where everything is
broken into minute steps. In theory, I want the admin assistants to be
able to open Google Docs, open up a new form, add questions, and save
the form, but even that can be broken down into wanting the admin
assistants to be able to open up a web browser, type the url in,
remember the login and password, etc. For degree I put 90%
accuracy because one should have high expectations, but really, if
they're able to do it 50% of the time without calling me for help, that
would be fantastic. |
| 3.11 | This website evaluation project
really fit in with a number of different mini-projects/thoughts I
currently have going on. I'm glad that it encouraged me to check out
Brain Pop, because I had no idea of how much content (and how
comprehensive it is) the site has. As I was completing the evaluation,
I did wonder if there was even the slightest chance I would be able to
convince teachers to check out the lessons. Even though it is
several years old, I've been reading and re-reading this blog post and mentally debating with myself
as to where I stand. As I mentioned in the first part of my website
evaluation, we had a minor virus outbreak at the school. Maybe it was
the stress that this time of the year brings about, but all the members
of the tech team and I got to have some variation of this conversation
(probably multiple times with multiple people): Teacher: I have a virus. How did I get it? Tech: Maybe clicking on an email attachment. There are ways you can tell if the attachment isn't legit . . . Teacher: How was I supposed to know that? Tech: We send out emails every once in a while to update and keep people informed Teacher: I don't have time to learn about that/read those. So, if there is no time for classes, and emails won't be read, what's an alternative? Continue letting teachers know very little about technology, possibly putting our network and their own home computers at risk? Or find an interesting activity and hope that the teachers will review it? If it's the latter, my recommendation is Brain Pop. |
| 3.12 | This was a pretty standard
assignment once I learned which box to check at the top. It's only as
I'm writing this that I wonder if I was supposed to come up with an
entirely new lesson to do a lesson plan about instead of elaborating on
my ASSURE lesson. I found the classroom management portion to be the
most difficult. I followed the text book in trying to discuss the
purpose, schedule, procedure, and expected end results. When teaching
children vs. teaching adults, I find that I spend more time redirecting
adults than children so perhaps that should have been included in the
classroom management section, that I'll be using redirection as needed? |
| 3.13 | The ASSURE lesson had two main
parts: writing the lesson, and teaching the lesson. With writing the lesson, identifying the behavioral objective helped because it gave me a more concrete starting and reference point. "Learning" about forms doesn't tell me where I should start, but "creating" tells me that I have to focus on the steps needed to get the learner from first looking at the computer screen to the place on Google Docs that says "Create form". Between the ASSURE lesson plan and the plan technology lesson plan, things are a little fuzzy because I wasn't 100% sure if I was still planning on a 5 minute lesson using my classmates as students, or if I could plan for more time, etc. After I did a few run throughs with a stop watch I went back and changed my original ASSURE lesson because there was no way I could fit adding in 6 different questions in 5 minutes. Teaching the lesson was a fun experience, although I definitely didn't take into consideration how the delay on video conferencing would affect the lesson. It felt like teaching a class at 2:45 on a Friday afternoon before break, but I'm going to assume that the level of response was based on technological delays rather than boredom. Maybe it's because Susan didn't speak (because she did have a lot of information to pass on), but there seemed like a big difference between how much I spoke and how much Jennifer and Jami spoke. That's not at all a reflection or judgment upon them, just curiosity. Do I naturally speak more? Do adult learners require more handholding than students? Am I talking too much instead of my students discovering more on their own? |
| 3.14 | I struggled with this assignment,
mostly because I'm still hazy on what my grand, overall masters project
should/could be, and I expect my grade to be docked accordingly. I
started a collection of ideas
to try and get my thoughts slightly unmuddled. For the AD3IE I
tried to come up with something that was broad enough to be considered
a unit instead of just one lesson, but was still short time-wise since
I don't have a lot of access to teachers. In theory, 2 twenty minute
sessions could work because that could be like a lunch-and-learn
instead of a full class. I still have to develop more of the materials,
including a short handout on the basics of accessing and editing a
Google Doc and Wiki and coming up with practice scenarios for the small
group activity that the teachers could complete in between the
orientation and follow-up sessions. One site I read on staff
development said to make activities fun and entertaining, but another
said to make them practical so teachers can easily see how it could
translate into the classroom, so I'm not sure which way I'll go. In
theory I'd like my masters project to be much, much broader than just
collaborative tools, but I didn't know how broad I could go and how to
write concrete behavioral objectives without veering into the
"appreciates" and "understands" territory |
| 3.15 | Creating a web portfolio is the way to go. I love how
I'm able to access my material from home or at work, that everything
looks neat and organized, and sharing my work with others is as easy as
sharing a link. I'm looking forward to the webpage class so I can make
my pages look better. I do hope that the other classes follow this
format for portfolios instead of CDs. Based on the success I've had
creating a web portfolio I'm going to ask my boss if I can have a
teacher website at work to start collecting any material I might need
and/or explore the possibility of making web-based tutorials for staff. |