Review of Free Websites

I went to http://www.picnik.com/app#/home
. This is a great website where you can add text to a photo,clip art to a photo, change a colored photo to black and white, or make a collage. This software has so many options for every pictures and the best part is the software is free. I definitely recommend to alter your pictures with picknik. Currently I have the basic software which is free but I can see myself purchasing the more advanced package at a later date. Down below I included a couple pictures I altered through the website.

A free office suite I reviewed is google documents. The nice thing about google documents is the site acts as a back up hard drive that you can access anywhere. I like the fact I can save any form of document including pdf files, excel, office, or powerpoint in a safe location. Sometimes I get to school and wish that I had a document from my computer. That problem is solved with this website. I also enjoy how easy it is to organize your documents. I set-up a tab with school articles, and then tabs for extra practice worksheets for each of the books I teach.

Google Site

Here is a link to my new google site. I made my google site for students and parents to use. On the site I included vocabulary terms we are covering along with assignments students may complete. There is an extra credit assignment where students must listen to two raps on slope intercept form and tell which rap had the best information. I also included a district calendar link. My favorite feature is playing original pac-man. Please have fun on my site. I think students will find my site interesting and will learn more math.


https://sites.google.com/site/mrelsheikhi/home

Using bubbl.us was a new experience for me. I could use a map of how to solve two step equations in my classroom. The students could be assigned to create their own problem and make their own map for it. This will allow the students to practice writing in math.
Another possible assignment would be half the class would be given the description of what's happening in the 2 step equation and the other half of the class would be given the algebra work. So, each student would have to either write a description or write out the algebra steps depending on what they are assigned.

Idea for a project

Here is a embed jing video. As a teacher my assignment with this video would be to find a powerpoint on a country that you are going to research. Copy the link to that powerpoint and have it functional in your assignment. Your job as a student is to alter the powerpoint and provide sources for each slide. By altering I mean change every single slide add information/pictures/audio. When the student has altered every single slide and added more information then I want a summary of the things you changed and how you confirmed that the powerpoints information was correct. Students may want to put in a timeline and you can find information by advance searching and looking at google timelines. (This lesson was inspired by the Macul Conference I went to about how to block students from stealing projects from the internet)

Google Maps

There are so many fun assignments that students can do with Google maps. The assignment I made on Google maps involved picking a major city and researching places to visit. I would like my students to pick a city or a state to visit and write information/include picture for a variety of activities to do. Students should research places to shop, eat, spend the night, sight see and etc. I want students to include in their review the cost to all their places and create a budget for their trip. An extension from this assignment could be students need to come up with a travel route and add up all the mileage needed to get around to their places to visit. Students can convert their mileage to how much money the gas would cost. Students can look at my example and create their own Google map trip. My example below

View jtotheotothee Chicago trip in a larger map

 The Tenacious Teacher (http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/teaching-strategies-for.../id263604316) does a good job of responding to a variety of areas like differentiated instruction, lesson planning, visual aids, and learning styles. I could see many teachers getting ideas and improving methods by listening to this podcast. I listened to the podcast on differentiated instruction and the teacher gave an example of a lesson with differentiated instruction using the same text. She recommended each student with the same text but different assignments for example lower level could do writing on characters, intermediate will write on the setting, and advanced will identify and write about the plot. She also talked about how magazines as an alternative to text books create interest and engagement. She then said student could have the choice in class to use an audio version of a book and read, or watch a movie and read the book.

The NPR Education Podcast (http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/npr-education-podcast/id270655782) is about National news and laws being looked at in education. The episode I listened to was on the hot topic of teacher tenure (airing 2-17-11) and the host interviewed two people on different sides of the issue. The two main arguments that came out of the episode were there are no jobs that don’t take into account performance and just look at years in the profession. (this was a person against tenure) The person for tenure said, that the union should come up with ways of evaluation and the most successful case is in California where teachers rate each other and discuss improvement plans together. The person for tenure also brought up an incident where a Principal of a school was evaluating teachers poorly before stepping foot in the classroom and telling there assistant Principal to do the same. I found this podcast to spark lots of arguments within myself because there are teacher who don’t try after they get tenure.  Those teachers are not there for the kids and hurt everyone else’s academic progress with the students. However there is a scare when people want to judge you on academic progress with each student sometimes we have no control over what a student does with their life.

Washington DC

View Larger Map

Interesting!

Here is the link to my Flickr

Incorporating Photo Sharing

Incorporating photo sharing in a classroom would be complicated and students would have to make sure posted pictures are approved. As a teacher a permission slip would have to go out and there would be a long discussion about what is appropriate and inappropriate. (I teach in Middle School :) However after students abide by the rules I think photo sharing could help a classroom create a sense of community in the classroom. Many teachers have students do writing activities using photos. I could definitely see photo sharing being useful for writing prompts. You could either assign themes for student’s picture sets or allow students to be creative with their pictures and post anything. After posting pictures I would assign my students to write a story using someone’s picture. It would be interesting to see how different someone story is to the actual events in the picture. Another activity might be to describe what you see in the picture. Having students take a picture of a setting and writing a description would be informative. I would also assign students to take a series of pictures and the students have to tell the sequence of each photo. Photo sharing is a good classroom builder and students can really learn more about one another. Even though there are plenty of benefits I am more of a private guy and don’t think I would feel comfortable allowing a child of mine to participate in a school activity of sharing photos for others to see.

What really stuck out to me in Chapter 2 were the characteristics of instructional design
1) Instructional design is learner centered
2) Instructional design is goal oriented
3) Instructional design focuses on meaningful performance
4) Instructional design assumes outcomes can be measured in a reliable and valid way
5) Instructional design is empirical, iterative, and self correcting
6) Instructional design typically is a team effort.
The process of Instructional design is very similar to how I try and write my lesson plans/units. I usually create lesson plans using a backwards design and create the assessment first. Then, I think about what are my goals/objectives for each student then I come up with a plan on how each student will achieve their goals. I try to create my lessons to be more inquiry based so that the learner is the center of the lessons. I use a variety of informal and formal assessments (projects, quizzes, journals, measuring activities) I try to use lessons in math that are applicable to the real world so students can see why math is so relevant. In my reading I learned that well defined project goals are important in the instruction design model. I have been getting better at designing expectations for my projects. I am always making changes to my projects by assessing how my students do on each projects and revising my grading rubric. I like how instructional design allows for students to have different tasks in a group and students can utilize their areas of strength. Another area I am improving at is allowing data to help drive classroom decisions. The chapter called data the heart of Instructional design and I think every teacher should have a re-teaching plan for students who are struggling. Every student wants to be successful in your class! Many students need coaching and confidence before they feel successful. The best way to coach is through data and showing the kids what they can do better next time. Allow students to correct mistakes and they will want to learn. I like how the instructional design has revise instruction for every step because that is most important in a teachers lesson plans too. I can’t really think of anyways in which the instructional design is different than a lesson plan.

Social Bookmarking is real fun!

Social bookmarking is a fantastic way to check your favorite websites from any computer. I think having a delicious site set-up with educational websites for students can really help get the students engaged from at home into. I put on my delicious account compass learning, study island and math websites with games. I really like how the delicious site sets up and organizes your bookmarker automatically by tags. I think setting up one is a great relationship builder with students looking at having good clean fun from home or in class. Many of our students pollute their mind with only music or celebrity websites. These sites are a poor portrayal of what life is all about. If each teacher came up with educational sites on their delicious account the resources will be very rich for our students. Teachers can also learn from one another and keep up on the latest research in education and technology. I really think that administrators should look at Professional Developments set-up for teachers using all the social linking on the internet. I am very surprised by how many teachers in our building use Facebook. Sometimes our teachers use Facebook as an outlet or a place to gather ideas. Social bookmarking might be an easier form of less complaining and more ideas of what to do. I also really think parents might enjoy reading links to articles on the latest research of teaching. Many parents tell me they want their students more engaged when they get home in doing academics and I think that this might help with that problem. I really think that social bookmarking can hold tremendous value in linking teachers, administrators and parents together. I think by setting up a Professional Development on social bookmarking schools can decide how they would like to develop a plan to implement bookmarking on their website or as individual teachers.
Technology is always evolving and it shouldn’t shock me that the definition of incorporating technology into the classroom has gone through several transformations/modifications. I like the definition of instructional technology
“Instructional technology is the theory and practice of design, development, utilization, management, and evaluation of process and resources for learning.” Pg 1
The wheel is a good visual of the 5 areas of study being connected or having a relationship. Technology is now much more hands on for our kids to create, explore, design and develop projects/ideas on the computer. There was a time where technology was only able to support students to watch or listen. Now students are able to learn and display knowledge from programs on the internet. This Summer I was able to teach my students using an accelerated virtual math course from Michigan State University. The kids had several labs they were able to explore while learning about proofs, theorems, and math concepts. The individual pacing was wonderful for a summer program. The definition of technology created at the beginning of 2006
“Educational technology is the study and ethical practice of facilitating learning and improving performance by creating, using, and managing appropriate technological processes and resources” pg 1
This definition does a great job of explaining clearly that teachers are facilitators of the knowledge used in technology. Like any area of teaching the students should be engaged in exploring and an inquiry based learning model. Students should not be told how to use the technology but rather be able to use their creativity. I think one good thing that is missing from this definition is the teacher being listed as the center of technology. Instead the student should be driving the technology. One bad thing that is missing from this definition is using technology as a social network or collaborating with peers. I don’t think the definition clearly says anything about learning by connecting ideas with one another. That is the only thing I would add because of the Web 2.0 era we live in.

Social Bookmark

Click here for my delicious account

Wiki-tastic

Setting up a wiki account was very easy and surprisingly fun. I have heard people talk about Wiki accounts but had no idea the templates were so easy to manage. I like the idea of creating pages that link to other pages. I could see myself either creating a scavenger hunt for students or having students link to different websites and learn about a concept being taught in my class. I teach math and would like to include links to definitions, tutorial videos,and different websites that might provide practice.
Collaboration would be ideal with Wiki pages but i'm not sure on how long students will take in making a wiki page. I think it would be cool to talk with a computers teacher and have students learn about wiki pages during related arts so they come into my class with background knowledge. If this were the case then I would have my students create a Wiki page as a project/final assessment. The students can each edit and add information on a research topic in Math. Each group would research a different topic and students would have to review everyones Wiki page. Students would be highly engaged if they had to write critiques and share what they learned on everyones Wiki pages. I am not sure on the time frame of the project or if our school has the technology to support the hours students would need to be on the computer but the end result would be very successful.

I don't think many of my friends use Wiki but I will definitely find out and maybe get them to create an account. Wiki's are great places to share websites and knowledge attained.  I really wish that more teachers assigned projects using Wiki. I am sure in the future several professors/teachers will have students using Wiki. I know that my wheels are turning on how to implement a Wiki project with my students. Students today are so plugged in and would love the opportunity to create something on the web. I hope as educators we can find ways to allow students to use technology in the classroom for every subject.

Wiki Hot Link! Cooler than a polar bears toe nails!

Here is my wiki link! http://jtotheotothee.pbworks.com/w/page/35502271/FrontPage

I have written a summary of the O'Reilly article. Thanks

Just Blog It!

Create a blog! My first impressions were very negative and I probably would not have signed up for this class if I knew we were required to set one up. I first created a blog in college and found it not to be very exciting. However, I wanted to be in this class and wanted to give blogs another go so decided to start fresh in my mind about blogs. After this second assignment I am very impressed with how RSS reader organizes your blogs and gives you feeds that you can read in a matter of minutes. The reason I didn’t like blogs before was the information moved to slow and everybody’s blog started to look the same. I would read one blog after another with no breaks or different forms of information given to the reader. Now you can subscribe to several different forms of media and see what people are into. I enjoy the pictures, videos, and links in the news feeds. I am so glad that my negative thoughts didn’t cause me to stop taking this class. This blogging thing is pretty cool.
I really enjoyed the Cone of Experience article and will often think about modes of learning with the analogy of tying a shoe. Creating a blog first had a huge impact on my learning and understanding of why people set up a blog. I would not have appreciated RSS reading without creating a blog first. By getting the direct experience of a blog I was more motivated to subscribe to others blogs and professional blogs. I did not realize there was such a large social network of bloggers with several different forms of information to share.  I had a hard time deciding which facets of the Cone lend itself better to blogging or RSS reader because both complement each other so well. However you can organize and exhibit everything better from your RSS reader. The RSS reader is a richer experience with the user able to find media in writing, recordings, radio and still pictures. By using RSS reader the user is able to demonstrate a more abstract view on their interests. You can make the RSS reader into anything you want. (Basically you are like an artist and starting on a clean canvas) Students would learn so much more about themselves and about others as learners from using a RSS reader. The article talked a lot about different style learners and I think visual learners would be able to learn better from the RSS reader. I am more of a visual learner and the RSS reader is way more appealing than just reading a blog.
An educational use for a blog would be a pen pal program to learn from people with a variety of background knowledge. Students can learn from experiences from other students and can even start a pen pal program with students from other countries. I think by talking to someone living in another country would be a rich experience to learn about similarities and differences between cultures. Rss reader would be a good place for students to compile sources to write a paper. The teacher could easily check how the student compiled there information. Rss reader would be a rich way to use a variety of sources. Checking sources and using firsthand knowledge from pen pals would help solve the problem of text books being biased or misrepresented a group of people. I have seen at our school who is 98% African American our students have a low perception of the country of Africa. One student told me he never wants to visit Africa because everyone is poor and lives in a village. Maybe blogs could help widen his knowledge on the different countries in Africa that are not shown in books or on commercials. I think blogs and the Rss reader can help student’s maybe hone in and narrow there search because like the article talked about there is so much information out there. Rss reader like Amazon helps students get reviews on different countries and students can save the important information in an easy format.

The role technology has on our students..... Good vs. Evil

                Reading both articles (Beyond Technology Integration:The Case for technology transformation by Roberto Joseph and Of Luddites, Learning and Life by Neil Postman) has really made me think about technology and the role it plays in education. I believe when technology is used for the right reasons students can take control of their learning and teachers can get more engagement out of their class. However, we need the right programs in our school systems that promote student's to learn at an individualized learning rate. As a classroom teacher I have witnessed several programs that have been extremely boring and the knowledge displayed is very confusing with little guidance for students. Programs that don’t have any substance (meaning the program just asks multiple choice questions and doesn’t give any instruction are useless in schools) seem to slow up student learning and create students to give up. My 7^th grade Math students love a program called compass learning. This program allows teachers to create lessons on an individualized basis. I usually pick the standards that go along with the books I’m teaching so students are using technology in coordination with the classroom learning. This program works very well with students who have been absent or are not getting a standard and need re-teaching. The program goes at the pace of the students learning and gives various ways of instructions and different modules of practice problems in a student friendly way.  Technology if used for instructional purposes and to counter the different rates of student learning along with the different needs in a classroom can be very useful to teaching to all students needs.

                I agree with Postman’s article that states “problems of education are social and of moral nature and have nothing to do with dazzling technologies.” I think teachers fear a day where we might plug every student on a computer and have the student’s just work at their own pace to accomplish a checklist of standards. The reason this idea is scary is because people need one another and should have the opportunity to work in a community. I am not sure being on a computer allows for enough time to learn how to work with one another. I have seen some students do well on group projects using computers but I don’t think you can only teach a student to use a computer. Our goal as educators is to teach students how to be problem solvers and I believe that learning without technology is good for our brains. I am very worried about students in their home life and the things they watch on TV or on the internet. I think our society has a huge problem with our youth losing the age of innocence. I hear about more and more of my students going and seeing “R” rated films or getting bootlegged copies of movies. Everything of filth is so easily obtained through the internet. We have a severe problem with cursing in the hallways during passing periods and sexual comments in our school. I am worried about students not being independent thinkers and instead listening to singers/artists or playing video games with no imagination needed.  I think there should be a limit on how long students are using electronic devices at home and students should be encouraged to play outside. I wonder how much technology has taking away from our student’s problem solving ability and their creative side. With that being said, I do want to say that I am more optimistic about technology than Postman because there are several creative Nintendo DS games, Wii games, websites, and educational programs on the computer that do promote students to be creative however are students picking those types of games, websites or programs? Some technology helps educators and some hinders are students and the realities of life. We must chose wisely what technology our students use to learn.