Instructional Applications of the Internet - July 31

Today I completed work on my Moodle Course Management System. As a whole, I considered the assignment to be pretty easy and worthwhile, though a bit labor-intensive. It didn't take a high-level of thought to complete, but I probably dedicated at least 8 hours to the assignment.

I think that the assignment could be revised to be the overarching assignment of this whole course. The podcast, webquest & website that we designed could have all been elements of the Moodle Assignment. That option was available, but it may have saved the students time if that was the way that the assignment was made. Regardless, I am okay with how it worked because, again, it was easy despite the time it took.

I like Moodle and feel that I would use the software, especially in the instance that I used it here. I would not utilize it in my current 8th grade math class, but would use it if I ever became some sort of technology teacher, which I would rather like to become. It is a capable, easy-to-use tool for combining many of the different resources of the web into one place, a great thing for a CMS.

Instructional Applications of the Internet - July 29

Today I resumed my work on my Moodle CMS. I had gotten quite a bit of it done weeks ago, but my work was halted by the birth of my first child--8 days early--and the excitement and duties that followed. He was born on Thursday 7/23 and stayed at the hospital until Monday evening, because he had low blood sugar levels & a low temperature at one point (he is just fine & perfectly healthy now). Since they feared that he had an infection (he didn't), he had to stay there long enough to have antibiotics and wait for the results of the test come back.

So, from 7/22-7/28 I was busy with all of the baby stuff--labor, birth, hospital time, settling back in at home--and am now back to work on my CMS!

I spent a few hours today on the site adding resources to my units.

Instructional Applications of the Internet - July 17

Today I prepared for and began working on the Course Management Systems assignment. I need to try to get ahead of the schedule so that I'm not doing coursework with one hand while bottle-feeding my soon-arriving son with the other hand!

I first read a bit about Course Management Systems and about Moodle. I agree with Dr. Ingram's comment that, technically, things like Moodle are not "Learning" Management Systems, rather they are "Course" Management Systems, which are designed to manage a course, which in turn is designed to manage learning. I wish there was a discussion board section for me to post about that!

I started designing my Moodle site. I am designing it for the class that I wish I was teaching. This class is an 8th grade Educational Technology course. Our school has no 8th grade technology courses. We have a 7th grade one, but I think it's underdone and primarily focuses on the lesser-needed skills such as video taping your friends playing catch. Regardless, I would love for there to be an 8th grade version of the class, so I am designing my CMS for it.

So far, Moodle is working out pretty easily. I am understanding its quirks well enough so far and am getting by. I have posted a few Assignments, one News Topic and made some changes in the course settings and characteristics.

Instructional Applications of the Internet - July 16

Today I prepared, recorded, edited and finished my podcast. For a teacher, this is an easy thing to do--a reason to do it more often!--because you kind of just picture yourself teaching and start talking! So, that's what I did. If you're used to standing up in front of a class and lecturing, this can be very easy!

Podcasts do have downsides, of course, and that is the lack of visuals involved. I may start experimenting with Jing--after a classmate suggested it--to see if that remedies the problem for future work in my teaching next year. I may also experiment with the recording feature that comes with SmartBoard software, which allows the user to record the work done through the smartboard as well as audio. I am not sure if it captures all screen functions or just that in Smart Notebook. That is what experimenting is for, I suppose!

I used GarageBand to record the podcast. Some people swear by the free softwares on the internet--Audacity, etc.--but if you have the software, GarageBand is plenty easy enough to use! I suppose if you wanted something that would automatically go on the web GarageBand may be one step slower (you have to choose how to export it), but otherwise it probably has more functionality that some of the quick podcasting tools out there.

Instructional Applications of the Internet - July 15

Today I finally finished my Website Design Assignment, though I found out as I was just about done that it was not for a grade.

Instructional Applications of the Internet - July 14

Well, today I continued my work on my Website Design Assignment.  I will certainly have a clear vision of how my website will be set up when I finally start work on it, but beginning to feel that my efforts are becoming a bit tedious.  That may be either a result of the assignment or the way that I am approaching the assignment, I am not sure.

Regardless, today I put another hour or so of work into my Website Design Assignment.  I worked on my Website Structure Web using Inspiration.  

First, a note about Inspiration - I don't think it's the easiest to use software ever, but I have it on my laptop for some reason (it either came with the computer--Apple iBook G4--or with my SmartBoard software).  It is relatively easy to use (but could be improved) and creates decent webs with a relatively low amount of effort.  It's not as intuitive as other softwares--like the Office programs and many Apple programs--but it does what it's designed to do.

Anyhow, I completed the majority of my web.  I got all of the pages of my site in and now need to add all of the links ("Connections") that will be included in the site.  There are a lot--due to my infatuation with the Math Open Reference site--so I will save the work on that until tomorrow.

Instructional Applications of the Internet - July 13

Today, I planned to finish up my Website Design Assignment and Submit it, since it was due today. I had worked on it a bit over the weekend, and figured that I would be able to finish up the Objectives Table rather quickly and move on to the Web and Story Board, which I expected to finish in no time.

However, when I started today's work on my Objectives Table--I had already finished the "Information" and "Interaction" columns and just had to search the web for some good links to add to my "Connections" column--I initially found that it was difficult to find good webpages that pertained to my topic--Plane Geometry. I searched and searched and found poorly made powerpoints and over simplified or over complicated pdfs about the topics.

But then I found my new favorite site - Math Open Reference - and spent more than an hour looking through its resources. It had simple applets that allowed the user to investigate and explore the basic principles of different math topics, most of which were geometry related. They were geared towards middle schoolers and early high schoolers (at least in my opinion) and MANY of them related to my web page that I was designing. So, I then spent another hour or 2 adding all of the useful pages to my Objectives Table. By the time I had added all of them--there were so many!--it was nearing 10:00 and I felt like I was ready to fall asleep.

So, I will have to continue this assignment tomorrow and hopefully hand it in by tomorrow evening! On the bright side, I found a great set of resources that I will use regularly next school year and in the future!

Instructional Applications of the Internet - July 9

Today I worked a bit more on my Website Design Proposal, adding to the "Information" and "Interaction" columns of the table for the first few objective clusters.  I will aim to finish the Information & Interaction columns prior to seeing what quality resources I can find on the web to potentially link to.  I will use these to add to the information and interactions that are available and if some are better than what I have planned, I may use those in place of my planned resources.

I also read a few of the articles about podcasting and participated in the discussions about podcasting.

Podcasting is one of my favorite topics in Instructional Technology.  I enjoy listening to them and am excited about the possibilities of them as an instructional tools.  Here are the possibilities that I see:

1. Podcasts can be used for teachers to give individual feedback to students.  I think that this has benefits, as it is useful for students to get individualized feedback on their work.  It is obviously inferior to actual face-to-face feedback which is highly beneficial.  As the article states, " . . . both tutors and students are partners in the feedback process and that dialogue is a key component of good feedback practice."  Often face-to-face feedback and dialogue is not possible due to time constraints, so podcasts allow the instructor to prepare the feedback when they have time and the student to listen when they have time.  I do think that feedback can be taken as more negative in this set-up because the student doesn't have the chance to explain why he or she did what they did.

2. Podcasts can be used as recordings of lectures/class periods.  This is great for students that think "My teacher goes too fast . . . " as well as for students that were absent and parents that want to keep up in order to help their child.  It can also be beneficial when a student is studying and thinks, "What was it that Mr. Miller said about factoring a quadratic with a common factor?" because they can go back to that lesson and listen.  Obviously, these podcasts are probably too long to listen to regularly, but since the instructor is recording while teaching, it takes relatively no extra time to prepare, so there is no harm in doing them (though the length will lead to large files).

3. Podcasts can also be used as short remediations on topics, either a review of the day's lesson for students that are confused or a preparation for the day's lesson to assure that all students have the necessary background knowledge and skills.  This can be great for all students as well as for parents (to help their kids prepare or help them brush up on what happened that day) and for tutors that students may have to help them review and prepare.

4. Podcasts can also be used as short reviews on topics, much like the remediations.  These short podcasts will help the students, parents and tutors quickly review what happened in class in order to keep up so that they're not intimidated or inundated with confusion when tests & quizzes approach.  These reviews could also be done for entire chapters or units to help students quickly prepare for assessments and to help parents & tutors help them.

5. Podcasts can also be used in an informational or newsletter fashion.  They could be used to update the students and teachers (i.e., "Don't forget about the test next Tuesday over . . . and the homework due Monday from page . . . and the field trip money due next Friday . . . and the Midterm coming up on . . . " as well as "This week we went over . . . and next week we will cover . . . and this will be followed by a test on . . . ").

6. Podcasts can also be used for student creations.  I see two main versions of this.

  6a.  One is for students to create podcasts much like reports or book reports or essays on a topic, reading or lesson.  This is an engaging way to assess a students understanding.

  6b.  Second, student created podcasts could be used to benefit the rest of the class.  They could be reviews of information to help others prepare for a test, presentations for the class (each student does one, but class time is saved by having them available to hear outside of class) or even student recorded readings of a chapter or article that is for homework.

There are many possibilities for podcasts.  I believe that I may start using them this year as weekly recaps of what was learned, what is important to study & review, what assignments and assessments are upcoming, what topics we will learn soon and any classroom management (field trip forms, registration form, yearbook orders, fundraisers, etc.).  This would be available to students & parents.  

I also am considering using them to provide feedback to students, but with 140 students, this may be a little much.  I could, however, do them for a few students at at time when progress reports go home to discuss the grades.  I could, also, do them for a few students per week.  If I did one a day, I would have done one for each student by early in the 4th Quarter of the year!

Instructional Applications of the Internet - July 8

Today I worked on my Website Design Proposal.  

I started off by drawing a simple diagram on a sheet of paper that split the things that I would like my students to learn up into 10 separate groups, some small and some big.  I then identified what things would fall into the groups.

After doing that, I started my Website Objectives Table by identifying all of my objective clusters that my website would be geared towards.  Basically, I wrote one objective for each of the 10 groups that I had previously identified.

My next step is to identify the things that will make up each cluster (information, interaction & connections).

Instructional Applications of the Internet - July 6

Yesterday, I finally selected and submitted my topic for the Instructional Website Assignment.  I deliberated for a long time between different topics.  I considered a few that might be useful to me in my teaching position (8th Grade Math & Algebra):

- a website about Scientific Notation, a topic that we currently have no resources for in our math classes at my school.

- a website about Surface Area & Volume, a topic that we do have resources for, but that a well-designed, clear, concise website may be beneficial to help the Math students quickly review it prior to their tests over the topics and to the Algebra students that don't learn about the topics, but are assessed on them on the OATs.

- a website about a set of Geometry skills that we have some resources, but not a complete or satisfactory set, for and, like Surface Area & Volume could provide a great basis for learning & reviewing the skills.

- a website about different Algebraic Patterns (linear, quadratic, etc.) that would provide a good "one-stop location" for a quick review of these important topics, especially for my Algebra students.

- and finally, my favorite topic, designing a web site for one of the skills I would teach in the "Instructional Technology" course that I dream of teaching in my school.

So, I had 5 choices, 4 that were of varying use in my current teaching position and 1 that would be of use in a position that I hope to have some day, but may never have.  I knew that the first 4 were the most useful & the final one would be the most engaging & fun to design.

My conscious got the better of me . . . I chose one of the first 4.  My Instructional Website will focus on the Geometry skills relating to two-dimensional Geometry, including vocabulary, transversals, polygons and  angles.  I decided that this topic would be the most useful for me, as I need an organized "unit" of instruction for these topics as well as an organized manner of going over them quickly with my Algebra students before the OATs in the spring.  An instructional website presents an ideal way to make this work.

Now to select a program to use and get to work!

Instructional Applications of the Internet - July 1

Today, I completed and submitted my WebQuest.  The WebQuest, as I mentioned in my previous post, was about the different data representations that 8th Graders should be familiar with and the instances in which they are best used.

I used Zunal to create the WebQuest.  I felt that it was easy to create because of its simple step-by-step, fill-in-the-blank set-up, but at times wished that I had a bit more freedom than the site provided.  My site is at this link:

http://zunal.com/webquest.php?user=32066

The one thing that I had the most difficulty with was the Evaluation page.  I had wished that I could change the dimensions of the rubric table to fit the needs of my assignment (or task), but found a way to work around it.

All in all, I found creating the WebQuest to be relatively easy and quick, especially in relation to its usefulness.