As part of my final blog, I created a VLOG! Who knew when I started this course I would be able to create a vlog? Wow, I feel so accomplished :D I am having a hard time embedding the recording though. I watched videos and read blogs on how to embed the player but I still can't get it to work *sigh* so I will post a screen shot and the link.
I always knew technology was important but not until I took this class did I realize how important it truly is. I thought that student spent too much time using technology before this class and now I know that expecting anything other than the use of technology is unrealistic.
I am sad this class is over, I wish I could take a refresher every few years, but now it is my responsibility to keep myself up to date on all the amazing applications and programs available to teachers.
Slowly making my way through all the assignments this week and I get to the PLN and Voice thread... I am listening to each other educators when I get to the guy from Chicago who says the single most important things is TWITTER?!?!? My chin hit the table. This summer session I was also taking Writing in the Classroom with Dr. Rebecca Norman (she is great if you get the chance to take a class with her). As one of our assignments we were to create a twitter account and tweet eight times about what we discussed in class that day. Now that the class is almost over, we had to write a reflective essay about the experience. I was not very nice and expressed my hatred of twitter. I never understood the point of twitter, honestly I still don't. So I am a little shocked to hear this educator discuss how imperative it is. Ok... back to listening. Oh geesh, another person plugging twitter. What am I missing here?
I am all about being a 21st century teacher, what other resources can I use besides twitter? As I continued reading and listening, I was hoping to get some other options. Maybe I need to stop resisting the current and join the twitter movement. Most of the educator talked about edchat. I have never heard of it before so I did some research. This is what I found: What is #Edchat?
Now that I completely feel behind the twitter times, its time for more research. How do I use twitter? Well, that's where I started.
For some reason the youtube search story is not working... So now I am trying to find an appropriate video slide show creator. Not an easy task. I found Animoto and created this video. After many attempts at trying to change the setting, I realized this program was not going to work for my project. I love the song and wish I could use it on another site I am working with. Right now I am trying to use Masher. It's not going too well unfortunately. I think I am going to scrap Masher and move on to Smilebox. I have messed around with Smilebox before but never made a video on it. While looking up Smilebox on google, I stumbled upon Britely, its like pinterest but for slideshows. There is a tutorial on how to fold a fitted sheet!
Anyway, back to the assignment. I ended up creating my video on Smilebox. I took screenshots of me looking up things like digital footprint, my name and images. Then I looked through the "catalog" of slideshow backgrounds. I found a few that I liked but either did not like the provided music or I could not change the text on the first slide. At long last, it is done.
For my WoW project, I chose to compare Zoho and GoogleDocs. I wanted to use prezi but I did not like the way my prezi was coming out. I decided to use slide rocket and create a slide show with tons of images and videos.
Creating this project took longer than I care to admit, so I really hope that everyone likes it and can learn from it. At the end I pick one of these two programs to use in my class. Watch the slide show and decide which of these two would work better for you
I tried to watch the video that was posted but after about a minute and a half the video stops. I started to do my own research on this topic and found that the Khan Academy now has an app for the iPad. This is the link about the app and the consumer reviews. I was able to locate this video which is the same but has a different title.
Khan academy started about 5 years ago when Khan started tutoring his cousins. He decided to upload some videos onto youtube. His cousins told Khan they liked him better on youtube. Now his cousins were able to pause, rewind and go back to relearn a topic. At the same time other people began stumbling on his videos. People began to respond to his teaching and appreciating what Khan was putting out there. And so the Khan Academy was born. Now, classrooms are being flipped, lectures were watched at home and homework was done in class.
The Khan Academy wants students to reach mastery. Each time a student masters a topic, they are moved on and up. This is an amazing free tool that makes diagnostic simple. Teachers are able to see EXACTLY what students are struggling with, where they paused the video and where they stopped watching. I will be passing this along to the girl I am tutoring.
What ever happened to all assignments would be due on Sunday or Monday that was said during our first class? I completely missed the due date on this assignment but better late then never.
I have used an online school management system in the past called School Tool. I immediately thought Engrade would not be as good as School Tool, but I was wrong. School Tool is very cumbersome and difficult to navigate if you do not know the program well. After using School Tool for many years I was very proficient, but that took time. Engrade I was able to pick up immediately. I love how easy it is to weight my different categories and even the option to drop the lowest grade, which I always had to do manually in School Tools.
The only problem I had with Engrade is needing to input the student's id. When I was working we did not know our students id numbers, honestly I do not even know if they had them... I am sure they did but I have no clue. My school always set up the classes for us with the rosters, so I assume if Engrade was the program the school was using, the id numbers would already been inputted. I am used to working with online grading systems so in general, Engrade is extremely easy to navigate. I would improve the view of your gradebook. It gets very frustrating when inputting hundreds of grades to have to stop every few students to scroll down. I would make it so you could see all your students on one page.
Online grading software is imperative for teachers in this digital age. Parents want to be able to check and find out immediately how their child is progressing. With online grading systems, emails can easily be sent out to alert parents what a child is missing. When a teacher has a website in combination with the online grading, students can assess assignments they are missing and hand them in the next day. Gone are the days when parents can be ignorant to how their child is doing in school until report cards come. Online grading software also provides print outs for each student with all of the assignments and their grades. If a family does not have Internet or a computer, a teacher can easy supply the parent with the student's grade at any moment.
If I had a choice when I was teaching, I would have used Engrade instead of School Tool, provided it was available at the time. Below is a screenshot of my fictional first period class.
