Final Capstone on Things #15-#21

Woo Hoo!  I finished all 21 things!  I am so incredibly proud of myself for wading through all these tasks!  It wasn't always easy for me and sometimes it took me four or five times longer to accomplish the tasks than was published in the time log, but I kept right on plugging away at them and I made it through to the end of the course.  There were lots of chatterbumps along this road, but now that the vibration has stopped and my vehicle's headed for the main road again, it's good to ponder on the bumps and the meanderings I took along the way:



Thing #15 was about Productivity Tools.  In this thing I learned about Media Convert and GoogleDocs and their ability to change the formats of files that are sent to me or that I find in the course of my research that are in a format that I can't utilize in a particular program.  I can use either Media Convert or Google Docs to change the format into one that is compatible with what I am trying to do with it.  I can also use them to convert a pdf file to a text to speech file if I, or a struggling student in my class, wishes to be an auditory learner and just wants to listen to the piece rather than reading it.  In this thing I also learned about Google Calendar, a tool to use to coordinate my comings and goings and one I can share with colleagues to assist in knowing when we have common times available in which to meet rather than playing email tag to suggest possible dates we are able to meet together.  I can also use it to publish my schedule, the best time to call me, and dates I will be unable to offer interventions so that the parents of my students have a better knowlege of what I do and the opportunity to know when would be a good time to talk to me.  I'm all for anything that increases my productivity!  The Marzano strategies covered by this thing are: summarizing and note taking, homework and practice, cues, questions and advance organizers.



Thing #16 addresses Professional Learning Networks.  This thing was about social and professional networking sites like Facebook and Twitter--allowing the sharing of news and view about many subjects of a personal and professional nature.  I had already belonged to Facebook and a Sphynx Cat blogging network and am also part of the Literacy Coach Network through the KISD, so I was already aware of the power of these tools to unite people with common needs, interests, and opportunities. It's a way to stay connected with family, friends, coworkers, and other professionals that leads to a free and open exhange of ideas.  It is a great way to keep parents informed of what is happening in our classrooms and allows students and life long learners to continue to share experiences with and learn from people across the globe.  Michigan LearnPort was also covered under this thing and is a powerful resource offering information, videos, articles and lesson plans covering a multitude  of subjects pertinent to Michigan educators.   The Marzano strategies covered here are Cooperative Learning; Objectives and Feedback; Reinforce Effort and Provide Recognition.



Thing #17 was about Research and Reference Tools.  Most people doing research use a search engine, such as Google,Yahoo or Wikipedia to find information, but is what we find there valid and reliable? This "thing" offered links to educational databases like MeL and RefDesk.com that provide reliable and valid information while saving search time.  I found the Mel databases difficult to use at times and became quite frustrated.  One of the databases, KidsInfoBits was a wonderful resource for my area of teaching needs.  KidInfoBits offered an age appropriate body of easily understood information for the elementary school child.  The entries were presented with the easiest material first and the difficulty level clearly labeled.  This alone will save an enormous amount of time for elementary school researchers.  Many of the entries were also available in an audio format, allowing those children who can't read the materials to still participate in the research.  This thing also provided links to a couple of citation makers like Bibme and Landmark Citation Machine.  These were extremely useful tools which allow a student to type in the answers to a few questions and then the citation makers will make the citation for you in many different formats.  A real time saver when making bibliographies.  The Marzano strategies addressed in this "Thing" are: Summarizing and Note-taking; Similarities and Differences; Homework and Practice; and Generating and Testing Hypothesis.



Thing #18 deals with Staying Informed and introduced us to aggregators and RSS Feeds. I really liked this thing and have already found it useful.  I began a startup page with IGoogle and installed Google Reader which is an RSS aggregator.  It collects the feeds from several blogs I have chosen to follow for both my personal interests and my professional ones as well...and it puts them all in one place, at my fingertips.  I signed up for the rss feeds on the NCTE professional journal and I have already found several items of interest that I read--this is good because I would not have been seeking those journal entries out, yet when they were there in front of me in an easy to access manner, I took the time to read them.  I'm worried about letting my new found skills in technology wane after I'm finished with this class, so I intend to find a good blog to follow that isn't over my head and allows me to continue finding out about current things in the technology field that I might be able to use in my  teaching and personal learning.  The Marzano strategies involved in this thing are: summarizing and notetaking.



Thing #19 The Virtual Classroom--the Michigan Merit Curriculum guidelines that were put into place in 2006, more schools are offering students instruction in a virtual education environment. Teachers can offer blended instruction, or fully online courses on a CMS.  Other Internet tools like Wikis, Blogs, Web Pages, and video conferencing help to open and extend our classrooms far beyond the four walls of our schools or the hours and minutes available between the beginning and ending bells.  I was sent to a wonderful site called CAPspace where I discovered many pretty exciting opportunities to collaborate with other schools, classes, authors, celebrations, etc.  I found these opportunities very intriguing and would like to sign up for my students to participate in quite a few of them.  We were also asked to write a plan to make our classrooms more blended ones.  I plan to use my classroom blog to extend the walls of my classroom by offering weekly lists of skills we've covered in class along with some supplemental materials to enhance or remediate those same skills we've covered in class, at home. I'd like to design a monthly web quest for my students to particpate in and learn from.  I'd like to post videos and podcasts in a weekly hint section.  And that is all just as a beginning.  I'd really like to research things and start amassing an array of resources so I can run my blog easily and efficiently next year.  I'll spend the rest of the year and the summer locating things I'd like to use.  I also plan to design and use Google Doc Forms to make formative assessments for the students to monitor their own learning and offer these on the blog as well.
This "Thing" scared me, but once I got the idea of all the ways I could accomplish this, it was pretty exciting!  The Marzano strategies used in this one were: Cooperative Learning; Questions, Cues & Advance Organizers.



Thing #20 Graphic Organizers and Word Clouds
This one was my favorite!  I have long been a staunch supporter of the use of graphic organizers as a learning tool and was so pleased to find some of the online resources available for their use.   Sites like Bubbl.us and Gliffy offer mind mapping programs and flow charts which help kids put their thinking into graphic representations which solidfy and sometimes even formulate their learning.  Mind maps help us think in an organized and effecient way--allowing a logical progression into deeper thinking.  Flow charts help to understand cause and effect relationships and the passage of time.  The use of the computer to organize one's thoughts into an easy-to-construct thought web is highly motivating.  For those students that struggle with where or how to start, this site offers the perfect way to do it.  I will be using these sites regularly and have already sent my colleagues to them as a strategy to use with a couple of their at risk students. Bubbl.us is particularly user friendly and is extremely easy to teach as well, so it is easily embraced by the regular ed teacher as a classroom tool they won't mind introducing to their students to use independently.  The second offering was theuse of word clouds which I also thought was extremely useful and exciting in that I can find so many fun and motivating things to do with it.  In our school we use The Daily Five which as a daily working with words component.  I will be using the word cloud sites like Wordle and Tagxedo to make lots of fun working with words and writing exercises.  I think I may also be able to use this as a fun formulative assessment since the size of the words in the word cloud are determined by their frequency in the written material from which the words are taken.  So, at a glance, I should be able to get a pretty good idea of what this particular student finds important by looking at his/her word cloud.  The Marzano strategies used for this one are: Questions, Cues and Advance Organizers; Non-Linguistic Rerpesentations.



Thing #21 covers Screencasting and offers the resources to do so with Screencast-o-matic and Jing.  Jing requires you to download the software, but Screencast-o-matic doesn't require you to download anything.  Both have basic versions which are free and with them, you can make up to a five minute video or podcast.  The opportunity to make your own how-to videos and pod casts opens am entire new world of teaching techniques to use as part of a blended or traditional classroom to explain things kids have difficulty mastering.  I made a short how-to video on screencast-o-matic  on how to round off whole numbers.  I made a power point presentation and then easily transfered that presentation to a video format which I narrated.  It was very easy to use the screencast-o-matic and once it was finished it was easily uploaded to YouTube and then embedded into my face of the classroom blog.  I think this is something I will use a lot in the future....and also a fun thing to teach my students to do as well.  There will always be things kids struggle with, and this offers a unique way to handle teaching those skills.  The Marzano strategies used in this "thing" are: Objectives and Feedback; Homework and Practice; Nonlinguistic Representations.



The second part of this capstone assignment is to choose one of the tools in these last 7 "things"and to plan a lesson using one of the seven things.  We are also supposed to include how it will fulfill one of the Michigan Content Standards.  I chose to use the following third grade Michigan Grade Level Content Expectation:
 L.RP.03.05 : respond to and retell what a speaker said, paraphrasing and explaining the main idea, and then extend their response by connecting and relating it to personal experiences.

I'll use Thing #20 visual learning and graphic organizers for my lesson plan.  The plan is to have my students participate in a CAPspace collaborative activity with another third grade classroom.  The assignment will be to listen to an online presentation of a story about the constructing of a snow man.  The collaborative part requires each student to make an art project illustrating their own experiences making a snow man,  then writing a short personal narrative sharing the making of that snowman.  They will then share their stories with a partner from the other classroom in an online celebration event.  The student will then be responsible for summarizing their partner's story to include the main idea and a few of the supporting details and then comparing it to their own experience with their own snowman in a two paragraph piece.  As the final part of the assignment, we'll take our paragraphs to Bubbl.us and make a word cloud art project to display and share with our partners from the other classroom. 

Again, this has been such a wonderful experience!  Tough and time consuming, but well worth every minute I spent on it.  Thanks, Ron and KISD for the opportunity to take this class!

Respectfully submitted,
Susi Meagher

Thing #21 Creating A Pod Cast

I was scared of this thing for some reason, but I ended up having a blast with it!  My hardest task here was to figure out what I wanted to make the pod cast about.  After a lot of thought, I decided to make one about rounding off whole numbers which is historically rather difficult for third graders--they get it when they learn to round off for one place, but then ask them to round to a different place and they are totally lost.  I learned this technique a long time ago--from whom, I can't say, so I can't credit it to anyone, but it's a fun way for the kids to learn rounding and with this technique, they seem to be able to accomplish the task no matter what place I ask them to round the number to.  Anyway, I made a power point presentation, then I used the Screencast-o-matic  to make it into a video, which I uploaded to YouTube and then embedded into my face of the classroom blog, Literacy Lane.
Here is the url for it on YouTube:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoKC20wN0yI
I have licensed it with the following creative commons license:

Cinderella Rounding by Susi Meagher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

The next part of the assignment was to share it with friends or kids and get some feedback.  Since it is a Sunday, I posted it on my favorite sphynx blog site, Sphynx Lair and asked for feedback.  One lady showed it to her kids and I got mixed reviews.  Some of the comments were that everyone seemed to like the idea and the narration, good speed, fun use of the fairy tale.  But one of the kids thought there was too much text to read on each screen.  Another liked it all, but without a single exception, everyone found the yellow circle on the cursor to be distracting.  I have to agree, so, before I actually share it with parents and students,  I will have to change that.
I enjoyed making it and when I get those few kinks worked out, I can see myself using this quite a lot to remediate, stretch and enhance skills I am teaching in my groups, so that the learning can continue outside my four walls.  I can see me using this with math remediation groups-demonstrating difficult concepts, I can see a lot of uses for podcasts in phonics or grammar conventions.  Demonstrating the sound/symbol correspondance of the consonant blend or digraph we studied in our lesson today, how to make plural a noun ending in "y", concepts of non-fiction print, and directions on just about anything.  And with the Screencast-o-matic, I can make fun and easy little five minute how-to hints to post with a featured weekly skill on my classroom blog. 
This has been a great class, chock filled with great ideas and things every teacher ought to know.  Thanks for helping me creep into the 21st century...and let's hope I continue to grow in my technology
skills long after I have turned in my final paper.   It's been an honor learning with and from you, Ron!

Thing #20 Visual Learning/Graphic Organizers

The first portion of the assignment was to make a mind map using bubbl.us or gliffy.  I chose to make a mind map about elephants.  I used the concepts I require my 3rd grade students to use in their animal research reports:  appearance/adaptations, habitat, and endangered status.  Within those concepts, certain areas must be addressed.  The use of this mind map would be a great tool for my third graders to use to help them outline what they need to include in their reports.  I like the idea of the parent bubbles and the children bubbles--when getting down to the actual paragraph language, the parent can be the topic or 1st power sentence, and the children can be the detail 2nd power sentences and their children bubbles can be the 3rd or 4th power sentences.  I can see this tool greatly helping them to focus.  I liked this tool a lot, it's user friendly and will be easily understood by those students who normally struggle with organizational thinking. Here is the screenshot of my mind map:

The second part of the assignment was to make a word cloud from my reflection and to post a screenshot of it.  I chose to use Wordle because it was easier to use and I thought that would be an important consideration for when I attempt to have my students use it.  Easy is good!  Ok, so here's my cloud:

What a fun thing!  What a delicious way to play with vocabulary and organize your thoughts in a fun and creative way.  I can see making a fun class book about a new word cloud from each unit of study in social studies, or the vocabulary for the chapter in math we're using, or the attributes of a character in a book we're reading.  I can see doing word clouds for individual students--assign each child a different student, have them write a paragraph describing them and everything they know about him/her, then making a word cloud out of each student's paragraph and posting them around the room--making a game out of reading the words and trying to figure out whose cloud it is.  I think this is a cool tool that makes something that might very well be tedious and unmotivational into something exciting and graphically creative.  The ability to make them, in itself,  is highly motivational, and since the words are sized by importance (decided upon by frequency of use within the writing used), I can see from a glance the most important concepts in the mind of the writer--this gives me a quick gauge to see if the students understand the concept by the words they choose and their importance in the cloud.  Brilliant use of technology here.  Something that seems so simple, yet is quite powerful in and of itself.  You can, of course use it for the purpose for which it was intended as well--brainstorming.  But no matter how you choose to use it, it's great!  This has been one of my favorites!

Thing #19 Virtual Classroom

In the day and age in which we live, we need to plan for the instruction we give to extend beyond the walls of our classroom and after the dismissal bells have rung.  This assignment involved making a plan for a blended classroom.
I plan to:

• Post a weekly schedule of the skills I will be teaching during the upcoming week's worth of LLI instruction, along with links to any supplemental or continuing practice sites or opportunities I can find to further and/or enhance my students' learning. 
• Post a bi-weekly WebQuest on a topic related to one of the Michigan GLCE's for the grade levels involved.
• Post a weekly schedule and the learning targets for each group with whom I meet.
• Post weekly Quizlet formative assessment quizzes for student monitoring of progress.
• Post recommendations for books I think my students might enjoy

I plan to do this in my Face of the Classroom blog.  I'd also like to post a section for new teaching resources I discover for those teachers I coach--things my colleagues might find useful.  I would also like to try participating with the Read Across America activities offered on CapSpace.  It looked like there were some really cool things for elementary kids to do--author conferences,reading aloud and sharing projects--gosh, I saw about 20 things that looked great right at first look.  I am looking forward to getting involved with some of those projects as well.
This will help me use my blog to fulfill the NETS-T standards:
1. Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity--  I believe the Web quests will inspire student learning and creativity.
2. Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments--I think the weekly Quizlets for formative assessment and the additional enrichment or extra practice sites will accomplish this. 
3. Model Digital-Age Work and Learning--I believe the ability to communicate and collaborate with students, parents and my colleagues demonstrates this standard.
4. Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility--I plan to use the blog entry I have about Netiquette and direct my colleagues toward resources on digital citizenship, copyright and fair use.  I believe this will fulfill one aspect of this standard.
5. Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership--by participating in local learning communities with mycolleagues and a more global community with some of the projects on CapSpace, I feel I will have also addressed at least one aspect of this standard as well.
The second part of the assignment was to play the student role in Navigating the Land of Online Learning and write a summary of what it takes to be a successful online student.  There were a series of questions to answer--is there a cost?  Can I use my own lap top?  Can I access the course from home?  Is it harder than a face to face class?  Is there tech support available to me?  Can I drop it without penalty if I don't like it?  Do I have to do it only at home or at school?  Can I use my lap top at school?  Do I need special skills to succeed in this class?  Will this course support either platform? How many online classes can I take?  These all dealt with the questions to ask before you sign up for an online class, but I think you must also ask yourself if you are willing to take the time and effort it is going to take to complete the tasks--are you self-driven enough to not require someone standing over your shoulder reminding you that the work needs to be done?  Do I have good time management skills? Am I a good communicator? Am I technology savvy enough to handle the work?  Do I understand Netiquette?  Copyright laws and plagiurism?  Do I think I would enjoy it?  I believe you don't have to be a computer wizard, but you do have to be tech savvy enough to maneuver through the tasks without constant assistance.

Thing # 18 Staying Informed With RSS Aggregators

I liked this thing!  I don't follow a lot of blogs yet, but was excited to see there is a way to keep track of everything in one place.  I made an IGOOGLE account and added a few gadgets and changed the theme to cat nap, so it feels like it's mine.  Then I added Google Reader and added subscriptions to some of my personal fun blogs like Nofuratu, The Adventures of a Naked Cat and Sphynx Lair, but then I added our instructor, Ron Houtman's Twitter page and the NCTE professional journal where I already found some articles I wanted to read. We're supposed to take a screen shot of the page and post it showing some of the sites we've subscribed to.  Am not sure what view to have chosen, so I will post a couple views.  I originally had several things to read, but hadn't changed the settings yet and when I scrolled past them they were all marked as read and then it kept showing that I had nothing new to read.  So I went to GoogleReader and took a screenshot of my subscritptions list:

Here's one of the actual IGoogle start page showing the reader with some unread entries:

I've just gotten started on this but I'm excited about it!  It has already begun to change me professionally for the better by allowing me to subscribe to the NCTE journal.  I probably would not have gone to actively seek out the NCTE articles unless I needed something specific.  However, with the articles right in front of me, it was easy to find something to get interested in.  Keeping informed by using this start page and rss aggregator reduces my surfing/catching up with my favorite sites time, thereby increasing my productivity, but even more importantly, inspires me to be a better teacher by keeping me well informed and current with best practices and articles of interest to educators in my field. 

Thing #17 Research and Reference Tools

Writing a research report is one of our third grade GLCE's and finding suitable sites to use has been a chore throughout the years.  My partner teacher sent me to Kid InfoBits last year and it has certainly filled a major void in materials that are valid and appropriate for the younger elementary school student.  I chose to compare Kid InfoBits and E Library Elementary.
Both sites had an elementary feel to them and were relatively user friendly, but Kid InfoBits  was a hands down favorite.  I chose to search "manatees".  Both offered articles and pictures and E Library offered a video of a manatee that was famous for moving up north every year.  The trouble with E Library was, I had to go to the 22nd hit to find even an article that was as low as 7th grade readability.  Most of my little guys wouldn't be still on task if they had to look through that many citations.  What I like about Kids InfoBits, is that the information starts with the easiest to read and has a legend that shows which articles are easy and which are difficult.   The listen function is also clearly present on the page, so if the child is unable to read the selection, they can easily have it read to them.  Also, E Library didn't have a lot of introductory basic information about what a manatee is.  Most of the articles were geared toward 10th through 12th grade.  Here is a screenshot of Kids InfoBits:

 and one of eLibrary:

The second part of the assignment asked us to analyze one of the other databases on MEL.  I chose to take a look at the General One File.  I looked up information on teaching money skills to elementary school children.  The search produced entries from 163 magazines, 56 educational journals, 1 book, 326 news articles and 7 multimedia offerings.  I perused a few of the articles--I had to sort out those that weren't aimed toward elementary school kids--and found them fairly interesting.  I watched one of the news casted interviews with a teacher advocating for starting teaching money skills to preschoolers and giving several examples of activities that families could engage in toward the goal of giving their kids money sense.  I found there to be a huge amount of resources available, but they tended to be more in the realm of theory rather than practical applications.  As for their appropriateness --well, I could see myself using the materials I found in newletters or on my blog to communicate with and educate parents in ways that they might assist their child's learning at home.  As for content--well, many of my searches prior to "teaching money" were fruitless and once again, I found this to be extremely frustrating.  I attempted to look for something on the Holocaust and several other content areas and came up empty handed.  Reliability isn't an issue since this is all part of MEL, which has already been researched for reliability. 

Here's a screenshot of the General One File database:

The third portion of the assignment is to use the MEL citation maker to cite the website of an article I researched.  Here is the article:

and here is the citation, including the website information: 

 Bohi, Heidi. "Teaching children money skills: start early with savings accounts." Alaska Business Monthly 26.4 (April 2010): 134(4). General OneFile. Gale. Library of Michigan. 5 Dec. 2010
http://find.galegroup.com/gtx/start.do?prodId=ITOF&userGroupName=lom_accessmich

The next part of the assignment was to use one of the other citation makers to make a citation of a book or magazine article.  I chose to use Landmark's Son of Citation Machine.  Here's the screenshot:

And here is the citation: 

And here is the citation:  Polacco,Patricia. Meteor!. New York, NY: Putnam Penguin Books for Young Readers, 1996.

 Polacco, P. (1994). Pink and say. New York, N.Y.: Philomel Books.

Thing #16 Professional Learning Networks

"Thing" 16 deals with professional learning networks.  It is important to stay current and involved collaboratively with people we respect in our field.  Our first assignment was to create an account with Michigan LearnPort.  I had already done so for a previous "thing", so I sat down and attempted to take a look at what is available for me at this site: 

Frankly, this is not a very user friendly site.  I attempted to see what courses were available to me, but like with almost everything else on this site, you have to complete a search for what you're looking for.  Almost everything I search for comes back empty.  I was able to find a few video offerings when I was looking for "phonics".   A search through the lesson plan section under addition--nothing.  Under phonics--nothing.  Under the Civil War--nothing.  Very frustrating indeed.  I see that the site offers a search for people with specified credentials, it offers community rooms where people can meet to collaborate, and courses of some kind, though try as I might, I was unable to find what they are. I try to find a tutorial, and again, a search request comes back with nothing.  Perhaps I am doing something wrong, but how can I search for what I don't know exists? 

The second part of the assignment required a sign up with Facebook of Twitter.  I am already on Facebook, so I decided to sign up for Twitter.   After the live meeting the other day when the Ron showed us his Twitter account and showed us how to find people worth following, I was pretty excited about the prospect.  I can see many opportunities for me to use Twitter as a collaboration tool to stay current on issues that effect me professionally and enhance my own professional development.  Inside my classroom, I could see it being a fun way to communicate with some of my more reluctant writers and readers.  Anything that is real world and pertinent to their lives, will motivate kids to read and write.  I can also use it as a community building tool-allowing me the opportunity to get to know my students and their parents far better than I would be able to do otherwise.  I could also use it as a form of parent involvement--parents could know what we worked on in our reading lessons that day and reinforce those same skills at home.  Parents could stay active with tips and hints to help their children be successful.  There were several articles about ideas for using Twitter in the classroom.  I've included a link to one here: http://academhack.outsidethetext.com/home/2008/twitter-for-academia/

I am looking forward to having the time to really start researching Tweeters to follow.  I was very intrigued by some of the ones you shared during out live lesson.

The last part of the assignment involved researching and signing up for a MACUL Space account--now this site was GREAT!!  User friendly, and chock full of things I could instantly relate to--I found a couple of great videos that will fit nicely into my teaching arsenal of narrated books, and there was even a lesson on teaching students the  "_at" family of words.  There are sections for forums, upcoming events, blogs, photos, videos, chat--lots of easy to navigate things to do and ways to be involved.  I liked the chat and teacher's lounge feature where you could throw out a question for assistance or discussion.  There was even an entry about asking people there who might be worthy of following on Twitter--talk about something that was pertinent to me!!!  Could it have been any timelier?    My membership is still pending but here is a screenshot:

I am already a member of the Literacy Coach Network and recognize the value of a collaborative group of people with whom I can learn, be inspired by and with, look to for help when I need it, or support when I need that too.  I look forward to enriching my professional life further with these tools as well.



Thing # 15 Productivity Tools

I love anything that decreases the amount of time and effort it takes for me to accomplish things.  I can't tell you how many times I have been on the phone to our technology  dept. at school complaining that a file I was trying to read from the KISD Literacy Coaches Network toolbox was in a format my computer didn't recognize and wasn't there something I could do about that?  I remember various times when I used Works at home and we used Word at school and how I couldn't be very productive at home because the formats didn't match. Oh, how I wish I'd have known about Zamzar then!  I think this will be a wonderful tool for my classroom.  I especially like the prospect of converting regular files to pdf and then converting the pdf files to MP3 files so I can use text to speech for my struggling readers.  The first part of the assignment asked us to convert a word file to a pdf file, so I made a few line document which I submitted to Zamzar for conversion to pdf.  I'm supposed to capture a screenshot and post it here:

I had a really bad experience with Zamzar--I had to submit the file three times and the first time I waited a whole day to get notified that the conversion had failed.  The second attempt brought nothing--not even a notice of failure, so I thought they must be really busy and waited another couple of hours.  Nothing.  So, finally, on the third attempt, I got the conversion in about three minutes.  Finally!  On the whole, I would have to want to convert something pretty badly to spend much time with this tool--it was the exact opposite of a productivity tool.  It threw a wrench in the works--big time! 

The second part of the assignment was to upload a word processor document and using Media Convert, list at least five available output formats.  So, here goes with that:

I'll try uploading the same document that I used on Zamzar:

1. .txt
2. .pdf
3. .ps
4. .odt
5. .html
6. .rtf

This seems a lot easier---but I haven't exactly completed the conversion, so maybe it won't be any better than Zamzar was.  See opening paragraph for how I would foresee me using this in my work.

The third part of the assignment was to create and share a Google Calendar with my classroom.  I created one for my daily schedule and plan to post it to my face of the classroom blog and also to put it out there for my colleagues.  I can see that it would make life simpler when trying to schedule a meeting with my administrators or colleagues in another building.  I can also see it helping me to remember where I have to be.  Parents would also know when important dates in our LLI schedule will keep me from meeting with their children and will facilitate them knowing when I am free to take their calls. I could also post assignments to it, although as a literacy coach, I don't do a lot of that.  I like that it's accessible anywhere I can get online.  Here's a screenshot of what it looks like.  I could only get part of it, but you can at least see what it looks like:

Captsone Reflection on Things #8-14

Whew!  These last seven things were a lot of hard work!  But it was well worth the effort required since I found most of the information and tools I learned in this segment to be particularly useful. although some of them were quite frustrating for me to learn.

Thing # 8 dealt with Copyright and Creative Commons.  This assignment was probably the most difficult for me to understand.  Copyright and fair use is a complicated issue and I was able to watch several videos (including some fun musical raps) to aid in my understanding of fair use.  I took a quiz that tested my knowledge of copyright and gave it to a few members of our staff and it was plain that we are woefully unaware of the laws of copyright and that we are probably big offenders.  I found the part about fair use in the classroom fairly easy to understand, but when it came to what is ok and not ok to use on my blog was a totally different story.  After staying after one of the broadcasts to speak with my instructor, I decided to steer toward things that offer an embed code when I am unsure what is ok to use.  I also learned how to obtain a creative commons license and how to access and credit the use of other people who have given CC licenses.  After all, I agree with our instructor--what is teaching if not sharing?  Therefore, I was proud to put my CC license on my blog, my prezi and anything else I intend to share.  The Marzano strategy addressed here is: Generating and Testing Hypothesis

Thing # 9, Digital Images was WAY more fun for me and I had a great time playing with, enhancing, distorting and decorating photos.  I also discovered many online storage places for my pictures.  I have been using Picasa for quite a long time, but was glad to explore a few of the other resources available to us.  I made an account with Photo Bucket to use in addition to Picasa as I enjoyed some of its capabilities.  I am a huge digital scrapbook person, so I enjoyed this on a personal level, but I can also see several uses for this in my classroom as well.  I loved the idea of making digital photo diaries, our own photo dictionaries for terms used in a particular unit of study, but I also found this tool to be useful in making recognition certificates for my students.  We could design alternate book covers for favorite books using photos we took or borrowed from other folks.  This was a fun tool and addressed Marzano's nonlinguisitc representations.

Thing #10, Digital Storytelling was my favorite!  It was something I had heard about from some of the writing project participants and was really intrigued, but never had the time to give it a try as I thought it was going to be way too difficult to just putz around and gtry to figure it out on my own until the summer.  I enjoyed making my little story and surprised at how easy to at least make a basic one.  I can see any number of uses for this tool in my classroom.  As I already stated earlier in this blog, the opportunity to write, narrate, add music and movements to a piece of material that matters to a student is a POWERFUL motivation to create and is just the kind of critical thinking I want to instill in my students. I can see this being a great pen pal activity with other classrooms, video book reports, persuasive presentations like commercials or product endorsements, communication with service men and or other loved ones far away.  I just think this is a real motivator for those kids of ours that hate writing.  Hurray for PhotoStory3!  The Marzano strategies used with this thing: summarizing, note taking, nonlinguistic representations, cues, questions, and advance organizers.

Thing # 11 covered Presentation Tools and this one gave me fits as well.  I was used to using PowerPoint and felt fairly comfortable with it, but decided to give Prezi a try.  I liked various aspects of the tool, butit was extremely frustrating to me that even after repeated viewing of the tutorials and trips to the help function--many of my issues were not addressed and my prezi components kept disappearing.  I finally completed one, and liked the idea of it, but found that I still preferred PowerPoint for my own use.  Perhaps that would improve with more practice and I would still like to continue using it as it does appear that if done properly, it can be used with even kindergarten students with a lot of support.  LOL...I just have to be able to provide that support!  I also dabbled with Zoomit, which I also often found difficult to control.  The drawing tool portion of it was a total wash for me!  I found it impossible to get an evenly remotely recognizable attempt at a solid line without spastic jags and jumps.  I did, however, thinkthat the zooming in capabilities might lend themself useful in larger group presentations or for those students who are visually impaired or even to focus the attention of my ADD and ADHD students.  The Marzano strategies on this one are: nonlinguistic representations, summarizing and note taking, cooperative learning, cues, questions and advance organizers.

Thing # 12 was called Assessment/Evaluation and Survey Tools.  My two major forays into this thing was Rubistar where I made a nifty professional looking rubric for our independent reading options of the Daily Five which I will be incorporating into our third grade curriculum assessments.  I found the templates and already made rubrics to be really helpful and the opportunity to modify the templates to suit my own uses was invaluable.  My second portion was to use Google Docs Forms.  This one blew me away!  I am a firm believer in formative assessments and this is the perfect vehicle for making them!  With this tool, I can drive my instruction--deciding ahead of time what they already know with pretests, check for daily understanding with a end of lesson survey, allow students to monitor what they still need to work on, and then finally, if I choose, I can use it to construct a summative assessment as well.  I love the reporting the results feature and appreciated the different formats--either the spreadsheet or the pie charts.  This is a tool I will definitely be getting a lot of use from.  The Marzano strategies addressed in this "thing" were: objectives and feedback, generating and testing hypothesis, reinforcing effort and providing recognition.

Thing #13 is about Online Interactive Learning Tools.  And so far, in my particular position, as a literacy coach, I've found this one to be one of the most useful to me.  The resources included Google Earth, Quizlet, and Illuminations.  Google Earth was fun and offered very interesting views of various places on Earth, the ability to "fly" to various remote locations, take tours, and look at changes over time.  I think it might be fun to tie this into an adventure or fantasy story I might ask my students to write, with a new adventure at each site they stop in along their tour.  Or explore the depths of the ocean and write a fantasy story of a giant creature they encountered there.  A fun thing to use in social studies as well I would imagine.  The tool I was the most excited about was Quizlet, as it has the capability to generate lots of the kinds of materials I use with kids who are struggling and for use in my schools Instructional Consultation Team.  In my LLI classes of three struggling readers at a time, the ability to print out "pocket words" through the use of the flashcard maker, produces a product that looks professional and saves me an ocean of time.  I was also excited about the game formats you can use to teach or reinforce concepts previously covered.  I chose this thing to outline a lesson that I would use in my classroom.  Recently I had a remedial group of 5th grade readers who were having great difficulty with contractions.  I went to Quizlet and found a group of flashcards covering 11 common contractions.  The cards gave both the contraction and the two words that went together to form it.  I would print out two sets of the cards, and during a minilesson, I'd show the cards and we'd discuss the contractions, what words formed them and what letters were replaced by the apostrophe.  Then I would partner the kids up and add another set of the exact same cards.  As partners, they would then play "concentration" using the flashcards. Then I'd have them go to Quizlet and individually use the Learn function, where they would have to type in the two words that form each contraction.  As a follow up activity I would have them play the space race game or the scatter game.  The following day I'd ask them to use the test function to use as a formative assessment and games again so they could gauge what they still needed to study for a summative assessment the following day.    If I needed to reteach or retest, I'd play more games and have the students write their own quizzes on Quizlet and give them to each other. I know my fifth grade strugglers would really like this format--it's fun, it's cool, and it's effective.  The 5th Grade GLCE this addresses is:  R.WS.05.04 know the meanings of words encountered frequently in grade-level readingand oral language contexts.  The Marzano strategies covered with this one: nonlinguistic representations, generating and testing hypothesis, cues, questions and advanced organizers.  I loved, loved, loved this "Thing"! 


Finally, Thing #14 was about Online Video and Audio Resources.  My primary source of interaction on this "thing" was Teacher Tube as I am already familiar and comfortable using our school's account with Discovery United Streaming.  I used to use this frequently in the classroom to build schema or add supplemental materials to increase understanding of a concept we would be studying.  But Teacher Tube was a new resource for me and although it has several capabilities, the ones in the tutorials I watched focused on the three most useful: videos, audio, and photos.  I was so happy to find another resource for images I could use in my blogs and presentations, found some of the files I could convert to MP3 interesting, but I had to had a blast finding scores of fun videos that were content rich but combined music, visual, auditory and kinesthetic learning into a great little package for struggling learners. In addition to covering many of the intelligences identified by Gardner, this thing also utilized the following Monzano's strategies: summarizing and notetaking, and nonlinguistic representations.


These seven things were chock full of good stuff, but frankly wore me right out!  Looking forward to being able to spend more time leisurely learning their nuances and finding ways to incorporate them into my school practices.
 

Thing #14 Online Audio and Video Resources

This "Thing" was fun!  I liked playing on Teacher Tube and viewed a bunch of fun videos I can use in my teacher coaching  and with my own small groups of kids to build schema (background knowledge) for concepts I am introducing or that they are struggling with.  Teacher Tube has several capabilities, but I focused on the videos, audio, and photos portions.  I have constantly struggled to find images that are ok to use in my Face of the Classroom blog and the resources offered with Teacher Tube were particularly exciting to me.  I can search for images to use in my teaching or upload and share my own.  I can download files to MP3 as well.  But the real star of this show was the video section!  There were a plethora of videos available for classroom use.  You can upload existing ones, or make your own to use and share.

We were supposed to compare and contrast the benefits of video vs. audio in the classroom.  Since Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences, we realized that learners learn in different ways and the more of those modalities we can include in our instruction, the more likely learning is to take place.  Therefore, I like the use of video since it caters to both the visual, auditory learners and it also often addresses the musical learners and if we dance or add movements to the videos we can address the kinesthetic learner as well!

Thing #13 Google Earth and Quizlet

This one was fun!  I enjoyed learning about Google Earth and look forward to spending some more leisurely time playing with this tool and seeing how I might use it in my classroom.  Exploring setting immediately comes to mind.  I like the idea of creating tours and telling a story with it--might be fun to do our own adventure stories using this tool.  I also like the idea of being able to see changes over time, as in social studies this might be particularly helpful.  The ability to explore the ocean depths or the moon is pretty exciting and I know I'll find a way to use this to motivate some of my reluctant readers and writers.  It also seems to lend itself to assist those students who have difficulty reading to be able to see graphic representations of places we are studying.

Part one of the assignment was to  "fly to someplace" and take a screenshot.  So here's mine:

The next part of the assignment was to make a placemark and record a screenshot of that.  So, here goes:

I was a little disappointed that I couldn't zoom in so very closely--but it isn't like our library is the Eiffel Tower or anything, so maybe it's the best I could do?  Anyway, it's a fun tool!

The next part of the assignment asked us to make a set of flashcards for kids and reflect on how we might use them in our classroom.  I made a small set of long and short A words for one of my reading groups.  This saved me a lot of time and created a professional looking product.  I am on my school's Instructional Consulation Team, and one of the strategies we routinely use with kids who struggle in reading is by the use of "pocket words"--three to four words the child keeps in their pocket to review several times during the day.  This would work GREAT for that!  We also use the same technique with math facts and I can see the same thing being used for vowel sounds, spelling patterns, etc.  I loved the ability to play games on the Quizlet site also.  I will get a lot of usage out of this "thing" for sure!

Here's a screenshot of a couple of my cards:

Loved this "Thing"! 

Thing #12 Assessment/Evaluation and Survey Tools

My first experience with this "thing" was making a rubric on Rubistar.  I found a template amongst the many that were offered and I only had to make a few minor changes to it.  Having tried to make rubrics in the past for curriculum work, I was never able to do one that looked professional.  All that has changed now that I've learned about Rubistar.  Here's a screenshot of my rubric:

It is a rubric to evaluate the independent reading behaviors of third grade students during the Daily Five.  We had one in place already, but I like the looks and the function of this one far better.  It evaluates the students' ability to choose "good fit" books, time on task during the reading choice time, evaluates understanding of characters, and the ability to retell.  I will be adding this to our third grade assessments.

The next part of this "thing" was to create an online educational survey/quiz using Google forms.

I chose to use it as a formative assessment tool to determine what my students already know about pluralization.   Here is a screenshot of the response in spreadsheet form.  It also can be viewed in pie chart form. 

I think this will be an invaluable tool for me to use in both summative and formative assessments.  It can drive instruction as a pretest, act as guidelines for each student to determine what they still need to work on, and finally prove that the required learning has taken place.  A great tool, no matter how I look at it!

Finally, the third part of this assignment asked us to think about the data tools available in our school districts and to reflect on the importance of FERPA/HIPAA.  We have just received a very preliminary look at IGOR in my building and it seemed completely overwhelming to me at this point, as the presentation was quick, filled with way too much information and allowed us no real chance to get in there and play with it.  It did, however look like a rich source of data compiled in a lot of different ways--from a lot of different sources.   It looked like we can produce a report by student, class, school, or district.  I think I can also sort by demographics too.  I can do gap analysis on the MEAP questions and see what areas need to be covered more adequately in the curriculum.  As in any form of assessment, the data we mine should drive our instruction or it is just an exercise in busy work.  I am a little intimidated by all the data tools out there and am looking forward to increasing my comfort and knowledge of how to adequately use them.  I know what to do with the data once I get it, but am not yet used to actually using the data tools out there.  With the increased use of data mining, the need to understand and abide by the FERPA/HIPAA regulations becomes even more important to guard the privacy of each of our students.  I took the pretest and was apalled at my lack of knowledge --I scored only 11/21!  So, I went to the answers and reviewed all my incorrect answers.  I don't recall ever having been given training in either FERPA or HIPAA.  I wonder why that is?  In the data mining age in which we live, I would think knowing the rules of privacy would be stressed a little harder.

Thing # 11 Prezi and Zoomit

This thing was rather difficult for me--I kept losing my information and had to redo my Prezi about twenty times.  I'm sure with a little more experience under my belt I'll find it easier, but this "thing" took me longer than I'd hoped.   Here is a zoomed out screenshot of my prezi:

I embedded a copy on my Faceof the Classroom blog, Literacy Lane, but you can also see it here:

http://prezi.com/vmazqu-6m5js/cover-up-comprehension-strategy/

I was also supposed to give a few ways my students might use this tool.  I work with kids in grades 3-5 that are struggling, but with a lot of support, I think we could make vocabulary posters, parts of speech and how-to presentations, character attributes posters--lots of fun things!

The second portion of this "thing" is to capture a screenshot of a zoomed in portion of a content site and talk about how this feature might assist my students with diverse needs.

First for the zoom in:

I can see how the ability to zoom in on parts of websites or presentations can cause some of my kids with ADD and ADHD the ability to focus on just one task at a time on a worksheet.  It would also be of help to kids that forget their glasses or need to have their vision checked.