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.
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