Friday, October 28, 2011

Now up! CEP 811

Well I started again! So I am back in MSU and a new class-CEP 811. You can see my first project below:

Goal-directed Instructional Design Plan - Google Calendar and the 5th Grader

Author - Catrin Barber

A problem or a need – there must be a problem of practice or an educational need that should be addressed during the lesson.


To balance weekly homework schedule with their lives at home, after school and with friends. Students need a consistent way to record their assignments, use reminders and have someone “look over their shoulder” while maintaining their independence.

A real-world performance – how the learning objective fit into a real-world activity or need.



The learning objectives will provide the students with a basis for a real world organizational skill and walk them through the process. It will help them focus their work schedule and balance their social schedule while keeping parents or guardians informed.

An instructional objective – the objectives are based on the final outcome, activity or test. These objectives will each be different for the four types of knowledge; performing skills, recalling facts, identifying examples of concepts, and applying principles.
The objectives for this lesson are based on a real world need for students to organize their time in and out of school using technology.
Students will be able to use Google Calendar to create a schedule of their homework by due date and budget their time on assignments that are longer than one evening.
Students will have the option to use Tasks, Labs, and Share in order to enhance their experience with their calendar.
Students will share their calendar with their parents and teacher.
Students will use ASW school calendars for important school events.


A set of essential content – the basic ideas and skills that will allow the learner to complete the task or understand the content.


As a Google School the students already have access to Gmail and thus Google Calendar. They will learn in successive lessons how to input assignments, holidays, social engagements and other reminders. How to set the email or alarm reminders and how to enter tasks into the list function if they prefer to keep track of things to do on a list maker. All of the students will use their netbooks (provided by the school) and their ASW School Accounts.

An evaluation consisting of a test or observation – an assessment, observation or product showing that the objectives can be accomplished in the real-world setting.


Students will share their filled calendars with their teacher and parent and give a demonstration to the class on their favorite Google Calendar feature.

A method to help participants learn – the method to deliver the content; a lesson.


A series of mini lessons followed by exploration.

Motivation:
Meaningfullness – content and activities must have meaning for the learner


This is a life long organizational skill and will be very useful for their future in Middle and High School.

Pleasant consequences – the effects that achieving the goal will have on the learner

Assignments will be turned in on time, not forgotten.

Novelty – an attention-getting, humorous or curious manner that relates to the useful information in your lesson

Labs is fun and has lots of interesting ways to make calendars more novel. (Ie: icons and cartoons in your calendar for specific events)



Socialization - a strong motivator for student learning

Students will be sharing in class while they are creating their calendars and they will demonstrate their favorite part.

Audience – For what audience are you designing this lesson? Consider the following:
Age


10/Grade 5

Skill level (including technology skills)
Technology-skilled (1 to 1 program)



Prerequisite knowledge (including technology background)

These students are familiar and can readily use Gmail and Google Docs.

Technology Needs – the computers, software, programs (such as Angel or other CMS’s) printers, equipment, Internet access, time in the computer lab will be needed to successfully complete your technology-rich lesson.
Students are all assigned a netbook for the school year, school has assigned GMail accounts.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Personal Learning Reflection

This post is a reflection on what I have learned in MSU's technology class CEP 810.

The best thing for me during this class was that it gave me the time and space to look at how I am teaching with technology and reflect on where I have been and where I am going. Often I find myself moving forward at great speeds, treading water and galloping through units of teaching. The reflection that this class gave me allowed me to see what is working in my classroom and what I am not doing to the best of my ability. It also gave me so very many excellent examples and ideas from my peers as to exemplar teaching and lessons. Ben Bailey sent me a copy of his Google doc entitles Break Them In. I spent hours thinking up great projects with his list of ideas- priceless!!

I have a real love/hate relationship with the internet. My husband says I am addicted to Facebook which makes me feel like a 16 year old... This class made me join Twitter and that sure took me out of my comfort zone. For some odd reason I found myself making fun of Twitter without really knowing what it really is. Now that I know what a flexible tool it is, I am fully impressed (although officially not addicted). I enjoyed how the class made me look at different ways of filtering information through the internet, I tried so many incredible forums, feeds, social networking sites and collaborative sites. I have found several where I was very comfortable (Google Reader) and a few that push me to think outside of the box (Twitter).

Our SIG presentation was not only a lesson in podcasting but a lesson in collaboration with unseen people. At first I was a little frustrated by the communication lines but our group soon embraced Google Docs and we started to really fly! The SIG proposal was decided while I was sleeping and I have to say at first I was frustrated that podcasting was chosen. I had no interested it podcasting. I am a gamer, a video expert, a lover of all things that move fast. But it gave me a chance to learn, not to be the expert, to be the learner. And I learned, played with podcasts, attempting to embed things I never knew existed and had a great time learning from a group of experts. This group project exemplified good teaching, excellent integration and incredible collaboration. In this lesson I was able to partially meet one of my goals, that of using collaboration tools effectively. This assignment put me on the side of the collaborator, not just the assigner of work. Now that I see that side and have experienced a few of the frustrations and successes of working in a group I am better able to teach digital collaboration.

New goals are hard for me at this time of year. We are taking things off the walls, looking towards summer, saying goodbye to friends and students.... But I will keep going, keep improving, keep looking for new ways to express myself in technology and keep teaching and inspiring the best I can.

My Personal Technology Plan

Monday, May 30, 2011

Sample podcasts

Hi!
Here are the first drafts of my students summer book reviews via podcast!
Download our first podcast here.

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Learning Styles

The first thing that struck me when the above results popped up on the screen was that I am not musical. I actually cannot think of anything I would rather not do than play a musical instrument. The first instrument I played was the recorder and I was so bad at it the teacher made me sit in the back and not actually play, just act like I was playing. Strike one. Second, I played the clarinet and my lips swelled horribly and my teacher made me play it so much that they bled. If my husband ( a huge music fan and an incredible musician) leaves I turn off the music. So do not pull out your guitar if you want my brain in class...
Interpersonal-100 percent. I love committees, groups, cooperation, leadership. I was a Brownie, a Girl Scout, a devoted soccer and lacrosse player (team sport), in drama. I love being with people, and I learn better from others, not so much from books. One teacher I remember in particular was my French teacher in high school. He taught the exact same way every day. He would start by speaking rapid French at us until we felt confused. Then he would introduce to us what he had just said and write the vocabulary on the board. We would rapidly write the vocabulary (and conjugations, etc.) in our notebooks while he simultaneously yelled at us to stand up one by one and repeat what he had said at the beginning. it was almost always impossible, we were singled out daily and ground into the ground if we did not know what we were saying or had the wrong accent and he was just plain mean. I wanted to learn the "language of Love". I had so many romantic notions about French, and then he came into my life. It was exactly the wrong method of teaching for me.
And then there was my Literature of Vietnam class in college. This class to me was perfect. Our teacher engaged us in many discussions, we shared freely, had assigned study groups, and group projects. He allowed us to choose our focus and we were able to focus on this throughout the course. He was amazing, and Vietnam Lit. remains one of my favorite genres today, despite the horrifying content.

What should our focus be to try and incorporate everyone?
I think the key to this must be allowing for the students to have a certain amount of choice. I often start the year in fairly rigid literature circles (I choose the students, the books, the activities). I then give a little more slack (they choose the group, I choose the book). It keeps going like that until some students are off in a corner reading their own book, creating their own goals and making up their own projects and another group has taken over the big group desk and vociferously discussing the book and deicing what they should do next. I see a big improvement in attitudes toward reading at the end of the year when the students have made their own decisions. I have been trying over the last few years to step away from always doing group work (because I am so interpersonal I think they all are too..). But I have realized that some students really do prefer to work on their own, and what they produce is quality. I have no idea how to relate or add music into my classroom, but I have never discouraged a project if it is musical.

Creative Commons Lab




Photo Attribution:
Original image: "Plitvice Lakes National Park, Croatial"
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4151/5062020446_b58e6c7b42.jpg
by:David Thibault

Released under an
Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

What a process to learn! I have been citing photos incorrectly for years! I have been teaching students to do it improperly for years as well. I have to say this is the lesson I learned the most on. It did make me feel better that most of the articles talked about just that, the fact that many teachers simply do not know how to properly cite photos. Excellent lesson CEP 810!
Now on to the real question, how will this impact what I teach and my curriculum? Creative Commons will be thoroughly introduced next year along with proper citation. I think it may be hard for some fifth graders to wrap their heads around which is why in my classroom we almost exclusively used photos that we have bought rights to. Our library subscribes to a data base (Image Quest from Britannica) that we use a lot when we are trying to make something quickly. However, each year we teach a major research paper and use Noodlebib to run citations of books, magazines and online research materials, I believe it only makes sense to add this into the lessons and require properly cited photos in their final paper as well.
Here is a link to my Picasa album where I have properly licensed my own photos from India.
And here is a link to my favorite picture that I posted...

Thursday, May 19, 2011

PC Maintenance and Security

Our assignment was to watch a lot of instructional videos on PC maintenance and Security. I watched most of them as I feel that, admittedly, I am a very tech orientated person but I think this is an area I am lacking in. What amazed me the most about what I learned was that so much of this is extremely easy. When I chose the tutorials to share,I focused on the items that struck me as having the ability to be completed immediately, have excellent results, and be easy.
Here are the instructions for this assignment and the questions are answered below.

Tutorial Number 1
1. Using msconfig to speed up your PC's startup
2. I learned that I could be more in control of what happens when my computer starts up by simply going to my Start-Run- and typing msconfig.
3.I also learned that there is a website to go to that will help you figure out if a start up item is necessary. I am always a little terrified to cancel things from start up in case my computer does not start up properly.

Tutorial Number 2
1. Using the Quick Launch toolbar
2. I learned how to customize the task bar and quickly go from one program to another. I immediately applied this to my work computer and was really excited by how quickly I could open a program.
3. That you simply had to create a shortcut and drag it onto the task bar in order to add a program, or even a document.

Tutorial Number 3
1. Optimizing your folders for better viewing of files
2. I have long been annoyed with the fact that the view of my folders never seems to be the right view. I prefer the list view, but it does not like remaining in that view.
3. I learned how easy it was to create a default view for all my folders by simply going to My Documents and clicking on the Tools and then the Folder Options button. So easy! Huge rewards!