Teaching Online Courses Participation Journal

Week of 6/14 - This week class started. Unfortunately, I was so busy with work around the house (repainting the dining room), spending time with my 10-month old son (my wife is still at work for 2 weeks after I'm done), packing up my classroom and moving the supplies to my new room (I'm switching buildings) that I got nothing done for the class.

Monday 6/21 - Today I finally sat down and got started on the course. I went through the syllabus and assignments and filled out my calendar for the semester so that I knew when things were due. I spent about 2-3 hours working on my tour in Google Earth. During this time, I downloaded and installed the program, then spent some time learning how to use it and saving all of my locations, followed by quite a bit of time trying to get my tour recorded successfully. For some reason the audio always cut out after two minutes (which I later found out was a problem with the software when used on a Mac. After taking a break for dinner, I spent another half hour or so attempting to successfully record a tour, then gave up and posted it in the discussion thread. I then spent an hour watching and commenting on other people's tours.

Wednesday 6/23 - Today I posted in all parts of Christin & Mary's portion of the Social Presence discussion thread, both posting my thoughts and responding to others' thoughts. I spent about 45 minutes doing this. I had never considered social presence before doing the readings yesterday and participating in the discussions today, but I can see how important it can be in an online course. In a F2F course it is important, but comes a bit more naturally. In an online course, it certainly has to be planned for. I will always assure that I plan for it when teaching online.

Thursday 6/24 - Today I continued my work on Social Presence by doing the activities prepared by Matt & Will and participating in the discussions they had also prepared. I spent about 45 minutes on it today. I enjoyed their "Jilligan's Island" activity and, although I was participating after the activity had already been completed (my group already selected their tools to take with them on the rescue boat) felt that I discovered how useful this and other Icebreaker activities can be, especially online.

Saturday 6/26 - I started today off, as I do most days, by spending about 5 minutes responding to my classmate's posts in the previous discussion board threads (Tours & Social Presence). I then got to work on Communication. I was relieved because this is the topic for this week that is ending now, so I am about to be "caught up." I spent nearly 1 hour in Whitney's area for Communication doing her activities (assistive technologies, communication tools for students with disabilities, web page accessibility test and Simulations) and posting to the discussion board, as well as responding to others' posts. I felt that the list of assistive technologies and communication tools was interesting. It seems that if both the teacher and the student are motivated to learn about these tools and technologies, there is plenty that can be done to help students with disabilities succeed online. I felt that the web page accessibility test was silly--it seemed to point out mundane details and irrelevant issues--though I was glad that it existed, as it shows that people are able to assure that their teaching tools are appropriate. The simulations were very cool. I found it very interesting to try out the different disabilities and it left me with much to keep in mind in my educational future. I will also share this with my colleagues.

Sunday 6/27 - Today, after spending a few minutes responding to recent discussion board posts, I continued my work in communication in which the work primarily centered around communication policies. I had never thought of a teacher having a communication policy, but after reading the Ethan Wattrall's article and participating in Christopher, Jennifer and Jody's discussions, I can certainly see why it's necessary. If I--as an 8th grade teacher--thought to myself, "Hmm, sometimes I think that a policy like this could help me," I can't even fathom how helpful it'd be for an online instructor of post high-school students. I then spent time doing the remainder of their assignment, which was to create my own Communication Policy. I expected it to be short, but as I worked on it realized that I had a lot to include here. I will certainly create one if I ever teach an online course. I spent about 1.5 hours working on the Communication Policy work in their section.

Monday 6/28 - Today I had to work really hard to get myself all of the way caught up. I am up to date on everything leading up to this date, but my Project 2 (topic - Direct Instruction) was due today, so I put in about 4-5 hours today working on it. I started off by reading through the assignment and its requirements and made a list of the things that I would have to include. After doing so, I looked at the activities that Ashley and Sara had prepared and crossed things off of my "requirements" list as I went through theirs. I soon found out that they had included all of the requirements, which is impressive, but concerned me. Granted, they have been finished for a week and emailed their post to me to look though, but I set it aside until I was ready for it. I sat for quite a bit thinking about what I should do that would be beneficial, yet not totally redundant of theirs. At first I was irritated, but later realized that they assumed that they were to cover all parts of the topic, which is understandable. After considering a few options, I finally settled on selecting some of the better known (to me at least) modes of online direct instruction, posting tutorials for them and then asking the class to discuss their benefits and disadvantages as well as stating whether they would use them. I chose DimDim, iLinc, Blackboard/Vista Chat, PalaceChat, SecondLife and two forms of Asynchronous Direct Instruction--screencasting (Jing) and podcasting (Audacity). I am concerned that it's too much work for the students, so I'm debating ways to lighten the load for them. I also debated whether to include the podcasting and screencasting because, while it seems like direct instruction to me, it most certainly is asynchronous. Dr. Kovalik confirmed for me that there is, in fact, such a thing as Asynchronous Direct Instruction, which makes sense to me. It was difficult to find good tutorials for some of these (especially PalaceChat! I found one from some random weird lady that is obsessed with Xena: Warrior Princess, odd.), but I think that the ones that I selected will shed enough light on what the tools are and give a brief image of how they'd be used for direct instruction, which is all that's important--not how do you use it, but what can you do with it.

Tuesday 6/29 - Today, I made a decision about my module for Direct Instruction. I decided that Blackboard/Vista Chat and PalaceChat were silly to include, as they were a real stretch to call Direct Instruction. A teacher would essentially have to type non-stop for the duration of the lesson while the students simply read. I hope that know teachers do that. I can see these tools being used for synchronous discussions, group work and such, but none of those are Direct Instruction. So, I asked Dr. Kovalik to remove them for me, which she did. After spending a few minutes on that, I spent a few minutes here and there, probably totaling a half hour reading some of my classmates' posts in my Direct Instruction Discussion Threads. I've learned quite a bit about preparing lessons for an online course so far--it takes a considerable amount of time up front, but it seems that the work during the lesson is a bit less and it can go on for more than a F2F lesson--even a week!

Wednesday 6/30 - Today I spent about 45 minutes reading and responding to my classmates' posts in my discussion board threads. They seem to be doing well with the assignments and are bringing up some interesting points, ideas and programs. While at least 1 student seems to be overwhelmed by my assignment--I think she may be interpreting that she needs to understand how to use each program, which she doesn't--it seems to be going well. I can already see that I'll be spending quite a bit of time this week reading, responding to and overseeing the work in my Discussion Board Threads. A few interesting points were brought up today, such as the mentions of Murphy's Law, using iLinc or DimDim for online office hours and the notion of Second Life being too much fun for learning to take place.

Thursday 7/1 - I can't believe it's July! Whenever July starts, I start worrying that my summer is slipping away. But, never fear--if I ever worry that I got nothing done this summer, I can look at the sheer number of comments I've made in this discussion board thread. Geez! I spent about 30 minutes reading and responding to my classmates' comments in my threads. The things that I am reading from them seems to center around similar themes (though not in a bad way):

• DimDim & iLinc are nice because they allow you to ask questions and get feedback immediately, but the fact that you'd have to meet at a certain time takes away the freedom and flexibility that most online students love.
• DimDim, iLinc and Second Life all suffer from a common disadvantage - they require a quality internet connection and a decent computer in order to allow you to get online and in the "room" to participate in class. Most students are worried about those things preventing you from joining the class on time.
• There are a plethora of great technologies that can be used in any of these situations, except for SecondLife, which seems to be in a class of its own. Elluminate and others can be used in place of iLinc and DimDim, while Camtasia and Screenium can replace Jing.

Also today, I spent 15 minutes or so reading through the requirements for the Project 3--Online Direct Instruction Lesson and debating what topic I will use and how I will do it.

Friday 7/2 - Today we took my son to the sitter, which enabled my wife and I to both get some work done during the morning (he's really been keeping me busy!!). After doing some work in my new classroom, I went over to my old classroom so that I could use the SmartBoard (I'm going to miss it!) to record my Online Direct Instruction Lesson, which took me about 1 hour once all was said and done. I used some elements of an old lesson from my Algebra class last year to set up a mini-lesson on Solving 2-Step Equations. I then taught it from my SmartBoard, while using Jing to record the screen images. The hardest part was doing a quality lesson with a start, middle and end that wasn't too brief in 5 minutes. I would certainly not use Jing if I really was teaching this course online, but I think it showed that I know what I would do and how to do it. After a few takes, I got one that I was satisfied with and created a draft of my posting in the discussion board. This evening, I sat back down at my computer and put in about 1 hour of work, first creating a SurveyMonkey survey to assess my "students" understanding of my lesson, then posting my lesson in the discussion board, then reading and responding to my classmates' posts in my discussion threads (from Project 2). The repeating themes that I pointed out yesterday are still recurring today, but other valuable information is being added to the discussion. I think that the class is getting a lot out of this.

Saturday 7/3 - Today I spent about 1 hour on work for the class, first reading and responding to my classmates' responses in my discussion board thread (ugh! Will it ever end?), then trying out my classmates' direct instruction lessons. I went through a few lessons that I had various snags with, before I ended up completing my work in 2 different lessons: Christin's Food Diary Lesson and Andrew's Emergency Action Plan & Fire Prevention Lesson. I thought Christin's PPT was easy to understand, though--as usual--was a bit dry, as a PPT can be. I felt that Andrew's PPT was a bit hard to get through, as there was a lot of legalize speak about what requirements there are for action plans and fire prevention. However, I found it easy to follow. I particularly enjoyed Andrew's quiz, both because I liked the site that he used for it--ProProfs--and his goofy multiple choice selections (i.e., "Is it appropriate to reenter a burning building to get your box of kittens?"). After reading others' responses to Christin & Andrews lessons, I found a response from Christin in Andrew's discussion that I particularly liked--she suggested using the goofy multiple choice answers as an intro to the lesson. I like this idea and think it'd be great if he'd lead into each of his factual, serious slides, with a goofy one that pertains to it (for example, Slide 1: Is it appropriate to run back into a burning building to save a box of kittens? Slide 2: It is never appropriate to enter a burning building.)

Sunday 7/4 - Happy 4th of July!

Monday 7/5 - Wow, it's hot! Spent the day at the parade, then the pool with my son, wife and sister.

Tuesday 7/6 - Back to work again today. I spent nearly 3 hours on classwork today, first responding to my classmates' posts in my discussion thread (I think it's safe to say I'm done with that!), then trying out my classmates' direct instruction lessons. I had problems with a few that I tried--I was particularly excited about Chris' KSUTube lesson (never heard of it!), but it appears that KSUTube was down today, as I could not view his tutorial or access the website. I wasted a good chunk of time trying to access it from different browsers, on different computers and by changing the address to no avail. I finally gave up and moved on to others' lessons. I tried out Anna's Zamzar lesson--I wouldn't use this for converting to pdf's as Mac's allow you to "Print to PDF," but plan to use it with videos, especially YouTube ones--Sara's Microsoft Word Comments Lesson--a useful tool that I will use in my Writing class that I'll be teaching this year and Mary's Fractions Lesson--I enjoyed her song about fractions and bookmarked it so that I could use it in the future. One thing that struck me while doing my classmates' lessons was that some of them are using the term "Direct Instruction" rather loosely. I'm not sure if I'd consider a word document or a link to a YouTube video to be Direct Instruction. They were effective, but may have missed the mark (that's just my opinion).

Wednesday 7/7 - Today I am really kicking myself for an oversight. When I created my assessment for my Project 3 Direct Instruction Lesson in SurveyMonkey, I didn't think to include a way that would identify which student was which. I should have included a question like "What's your name?" so that I knew who was who. Oh well, learning from mistakes makes some of the most effective learning. I spent about 2 hours today on a few different things. I went through the results to the SurveyMonkey Assessment, provided feedback to the students who tried it out, wrote up my "reflective summary" for Project 3, submitted Project 3, wrote up a summary of my Project 2 Module for my classmates to see and submitted my information about Project 2. The loose ends are starting to tie up!

Thursday 7/8 - Today I spent a bit of time--10 minutes or so--responding to my classmates' posts here and there. I hope to dedicate a bit more time later today to Project 5, so that I can get it finished before leaving for vacation tomorrow evening.

Thursday 7/8 Part 2 - I spent about 2.5 hours--not including a break to watch LeBron James' self-important 1-hour special--tonight working on Project 5--Online Teaching Toolkit. In that time I finished the first 2 parts - Orientation/Introduction Policy & Communication Guidelines & Policy. I had never realized that so much work would go into this assignment, or preparing to teach an online course. I certainly will keep that in mind if I ever teach an online course.

Friday 7/9 - Today I spent about 3-5 hours completing Project 5 - Online Teaching Toolkit. I was amazed by how much could go into teaching online and am glad that I am now aware of it. If I ever teach an online course, I will certainly refer back to this document. I will also certainly spend plenty of time, before the class starts, planning!

T&L – Journal #5 – Professional Development of Teachers

After completing my Master's program in ITEC, I hope to move on, within a few years, to a new job either as a Technology teacher in the classroom, teaching students how to use technologies in parallel with their learning, or in a Technology Director type position, in which I would deal primarily with supporting the use of technology in the classroom facilitated by teachers (rather than the things that many Technology Directors do--working on the server, problem solving, installing new programs, doing repairs, handling paperwork and such). So, in this second possibility, I would like to see the professional development of teachers in relation to technology become a major facet of my job. So, this particular Journal assignment really interested me.

Revisiting Technology Integration in Schools: Implications for Professional Development by Emily Hixon and Janet Buckenmeyer

The first paragraph of this article was one that I disagreed with. In it, the writers propose that the lack of technology integration by teachers is not a result of "lack of time, training, equipment and support" as is often said, but rather a result of the core values of teaching and learning of the teachers. This can't be true for all teachers - because it's not true for me. I fully understand and value the use of technology in the classroom, but don't have the time--primarily in my curriculum, not my school day--to make it happen.

The writers then continue by contradicting themselves in reporting, essentially, that while the prevalence of computers & technology in the schools has increased, the technology is underused primarily due to a lack of teacher training. Didn't they just say that "lack of time, training, equipment and support" were not the cause of the underuse of technology in the classrooms? Regardless, after their apparent change in heart between paragraph 1 (actually the abstract) and 3, I now agree with them. They continue in saying that while technology use in the classroom has become very common, that most if it is not "high-level uses of technology." Again, I agree.

Hixon and Buckenmeyer continue, "With all of the advantages offered by technology, why isn't technology being fully utilized and why hasn't education changed?" Their answer is the aforementioned contradiction--"lack of time, training, equipment and support"--which they then assess, through a quote from "well-documented literature" as "certainly valid concerns and issues." They then begin to move away from this standard explanation by saying that these reasons are not enough. They reference teachers' use of technology at home and other teachers' successful technology integration despite the same resources as reasons that there must be more causing the slow integration. I suppose that I can agree with this.

Hixon and Buckenmeyer briefly discuss a success story in a school system that suffers from all of these things--"lack of time training, equipment and support"--but were able to successfully integrate technology. They mention the idea of first discussing what the students and parents may be able to do or gain from certain technologies, before attempting to learn how to use them. It seems insignificant, but it makes sense to figure out why one would want to learn how to do something prior to learning it. As teachers, we often set and announce goals for our students, why not do the same in our professional development. "Today we will learn how to record a podcast so that . . . and because . . . " Then, the teachers may be motivated to learn and to implement the technology.

The authors then begin to sell me on their point, discussing the fact that while the aforementioned barriers to technology integration are valid there are another set of barriers slowing down the integration. They are second-order barriers which, "include teachers' attitudes about teaching and learning, resistance to change, innovativeness, teachers' beliefs about technology, perceptions of control, problem-solving abilities and fear."

One thing that strikes me is the realization that some of these barriers could be alleviated if more administrators learned the subject matter of the KSU ITEC course Managing Technological Change, because if technological initiatives were handled more appropriately, they may be more successful. Showing the parallels of technology integration to the Managing Technological Change course and subject matter, the authors cite a variety of similar theories that describe a teachers development from being resistant to use technology, to minimal use of technology first for personal (teacher) use then for instructional (class) use and up to high levels of technology use, with some intermediary steps in between. The authors quote a piece by Moersch in saying that "These developmental theories suggest a movement from a teacher-centered to a learner-centered classroom; from teacher as dispenser of knowledge to teacher as facilitator of discovery; from contrived text-based activities to authentic hands-on activities; from compartmentalized learning to thematic learning; from technology as the focus to technology as a tool/resource."

Their first implication for implementation is that the schools must first move beyond the first-order barriers (availability of time, training, equipment and support) and then handle the second-order barriers. I agree with this implication. The authors argue that if these second-order barriers are not attacked in an appropriate manner, it may be a useless attempt and that technology integration may never be fully successful in that setting. Unfortunately, they report, teacher trainings are typically not the best way to attack these barriers. Differentiation and readiness must be taken into consideration. Some teachers may not be ready for the technology, while others might already be partway through implementation and need a different level of support. Individuality is an important aspect of these changes. Some tools to aide in this process include the LoTi--which I would like to see--but there is no one way to assess and attack these barriers.

The authors cite Hew and Brush in three aspects of good professional development: a concentration on the technological content, permitting an opportunity for hands-on work for the teachers and basing the training on the needs of the trainees.

In the end, I ended up really agreeing with this article and enjoying reading it. I feel that if I end up in a career position where I have any say in technology integration and professional development that relates to it, I will refer back to many of the ideas and thoughts from this article. It is best summarized in this excerpt from the authors' conclusion:

In order to promote effective technology integration, we must find ways to address

all of the barriers teachers are facing, including both first-order (external to teacher)

and second-order (internal to teacher) obstacles. Professional development can

address many of these concerns, but the current “one-size-fits-all” technology

training, focusing primarily on first-order barriers, has proved to be inadequate in

light of the developmental growth of teachers’ technology use.

Revamping Professional Development for Technology Integration and Fluency

by Sandra Kay Plair

Sandra Kay Plair's article about professional development & technology integration is not completely different from the previous article, but has a different focus. She believes that the main cause for the slow integration of technology into the core curriculum classrooms of our schools is the veteran teachers. She considers veteran teachers to be those with over 15 years of experience and considers them to be unwilling or unable or afraid to implement technological integration into their curriculum. I am not sure that I disagree with this completely, but do feel that it is a bit stereotypical. After all, many of my ITEC professors have more than 15 years under their belts and my mother, who will retire in the next few years, teaches technology courses at her elementary school.

Those technology (or computer) courses do bring up another of Plair's points. She feels that part of the veteran teachers' difficulty is the notion that the technology that for so many years was "quarantined" to the "computer teacher's" classroom is to be spread into the rest of the classrooms. She stereotypes them as seeing the technology skills to be just that - individual skills that should be taught separately from other skills by specific qualified individuals. I guess this is where here points relate back to Hixon and Buckenmeyer's--she sees these teachers low on the change scale; they do see technology as relevant, but don't see it as a learning tool, they see it as a skill to learn. I agree with this assessment (for some veteran teachers) and agree that this presents a barrier to successful integration.

Plair feels that, aside from attitudes toward technology & its integration, one of the main needs for successful integration is technological fluency. She states "Knowing when and how to use these technology tools to enhance learning is how I define technology fluency." Her method of improving technology fluency is through the implementation of knowledge brokers in the schools. These teachers that are further along in the integration of technology are to act both as role models and facilitators for the teachers that are not as far along in their integration of technology. These people act as the "middle man" between the person that trains the staff in using a skill and the teachers that may still not know how to implement this new skill. She feels--and I agree--that after professional development through staff trainings take place, the teachers need support to actually put these things into practice, as many of them returned to their classrooms annoyed or confused by the training or unsure how to use their new skill educationally. I see this often from the teachers that I work with. She continues in explaining what key functions a knowledge broker could serve for these teachers learning to integrate specific technologies. I agree with the idea of the broker and all of the aspects and ways that they can be of help. My only problem is in how this knowledge broker will find time to do this. It is wise for the broker to be a teacher, as then they can speak not just to how to use the technology, but how to use it educationally, which is a skill that can often only be held by teachers. It appears to me that the best thing that a school system could do is to give these knowledge brokers extra planning time in which they were committed to working with their colleagues. If these brokers have time to support the integration within their school--and can avoid being stressed by the extra burden, which the extra planning time could alleviate--this could be a very successful model for technological change.

Comparing, Contrasting and Relating the 2 Articles

In the first article, the authors spoke primarily about why technological change was so difficult and why it has been largely unsuccessful when compared to its potential. The second article had similar feelings about why this was the case, but primarily discussed a way to resolve this problem--quality trainings and the use of knowledge brokers. While the first article blamed first-order barriers (availability of time, equipment, support and training) and second-order barriers (those inside the teacher) for the slow integration of technology into the classroom, the second article blamed the readiness and attitudes of "veteran teachers." Inherently though, the two articles theories about the causes overlap and, aside from in language, had a lot in common. Both agreed that the theories of successful change need to be applied in the situation of technological integration. The first article directly stated this and, while they didn't directly state it, the second article mentioned a lot of things that are part of the change theories.

After reading this article, I feel motivated to participate in technological integration into the education of today's youth. I feel that the ideas that I have gained from the articles give focus to my ideas of integration. The only question yet to answer for myself is: 'Will I be a knowledge broker or the catalyst of this change?

Works Cited

HIXON, E., & BUCKENMEYER, J. (2009). Revisiting Technology Integration in Schools:

Implications for Professional Development. Computers in the Schools, 26(2), 130-146.

doi:10.1080/07380560902906070

Plair, S. (2008). Revamping Professional Development for Technology Integration and

Fluency. Clearing House, 82(2), 70-74. Retrieved from Education Research Complete

database.

T&L – Journal #4 – Assessment

http://educate.intel.com/en/assessingprojects/

Initially, I was surprised to find that Intel offered this assessment library at all. After going through the site, I became surprised to find how much quality stuff was here. I find this site to have much potential for benefit for two primary reasons.

First, with so much to do and such limited time to do it, it is unnecessary for teacher’s to “reinvent the wheel.” This site prevents that. Need a quick way to have students self-assess how well they did on a video for class? There’s an assessment here for it. Need an assessment that can help students assure that they are collaborating effectively within a group activity? It’s here. Oftentimes, I find that resources on the internet don’t exactly fit my needs for my classroom. With Intel’s Assessment Library, you can copy and edit the assessments so that they do fit your needs.

Second, rubrics and self-assessments can be difficult to make, from both a technological and process standpoint. Intel’s Assessment tool makes it easier for teachers to create these assessments. And, as stated before, you could start with a similar assessment that’s already been made and modify it to fit your needs.

In my current role as an 8^th grade math teacher, the assessments that I may find myself using in the future are the Collaboration Checklist, the Teamwork Rubric and the Learning Log Rubric. In the future, I hope to get a job as an Educational Technology teacher. In that setting, I would use quite a bit more of the assessments, including the aforementioned ones and foremost among the ones I’d add would be the Products assessments, especially the ones for wikis and videos.

I also enjoyed reading through the Assessment Strategies portion of the site, I was glad to see such attention to different things to assess and different ways to assess it. There are so many facets to teaching, learning and understanding and Intel clearly understands this and the fact that there must therefore be many facets to our assessments. I found that the sections of strategies on the site represented some of the major skills that a teacher must possess and implement into good instruction and planning:

· Gauging Student Needs

· Encouraging Self-Direction and Collaboration

· Monitoring Progress

· Checking for Understanding & Encouraging Metacognition

· Demonstrating Understanding and Skill

I hope to spend more time with this site over the summer and, through that time

perusing the site, will find ways to implement some of these things into my teaching.

T&L Journal #3 - Digital Libraries

American Memory from the Library of Congress

I was first impressed by the amount of information that must lie in this digital library, which I deduced from seeing the 18 categories worth of resources. The next thing I noticed, which could be very useful in education, is the "Today in History" feature, which I assume uses date tags in the Library's resources to point out things that happened on that specific date. This could be especially useful for a Social Studies Teacher. Today, for example, Civil War era photographer photographed Abraham Lincoln before a famous speech and poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born.

The rest of the site contains some fascinating digital scans of papers, documents, maps and pictures from a variety of settings. Most of these documents are at least one hundred years old. Among the interesting things available on this site are a wealth of George Washington's diaries (wow!), 4 of Walt Whitman's notebooks and Civil War era maps. There are also old videos available, such as a 1905 video of the NYC subway system (just 7 months after it opened) [It looks the same as it does now!]. Not all of the resources are old; for example, there is a wealth of resources about September 11, 2001.

Clearly this site has a plethora of visuals that a teacher--especially, but not limited to, Social Studies teachers--can use to complement and add realism to lessons. Imagine being in the 4th grade, learning about George Washington and seeing the actual 200+ year old document from the Continental Congress naming him Commander in Chief. Impressive.

Youngstown State University Oral History Program

As a northeast Ohioan who was born a few minutes from Youngstown State University, I was interested in seeing what this library had to offer. While going through the site, I was initially disappointed to find that it was not a library of audio recordings, rather a library of transcripts of interviews. This could still be valuable and would make quoting easier as well.

Another thing that did disappoint me was that many of the transcripts were not actually available on the site. Once you select a topic that you'd like to view, you are sent to the YSU library page for that set of resources. For some of the resources you can view .pdfs of the transcripts, while for others you have to go to the library to view them.

One particular .pdf transcript that I read was of a Italian immigrant that lived in Niles, OH (a town that borders my hometown and is where my mother teaches). He discussed the life of an immigrant as well as some of the riots with the KKK that occurred in Niles in the 1920s.

It is very apparent that this site could be useful, but only in very specific instances. But, when studying Ohio History or when discussing particular topics (such as the KKK or immigration, as mentioned before), these first-hand accounts could be a valuable and engaging addition to a teacher's lesson.

Overall, the idea of a digital library is a great one. While plenty of information is available on the internet, not all of it is of quality and is trustworthy. Information coming from a library, is clearly trustworthy and of quality. What a great resource.

T&L Journal #2 - Assistive Technologies

For this journal entry I chose to do the Assistive Technologies assignment, primarily because I am often impressed by some of the assistive technologies that are available, that I had never known about. While I am sure that there is still a lack of these types of technologies and places to find them, I am glad that they are actually made and available. I'm sure that there is much more available now than there would have been a decade or more ago. It is good that our society is moving towards providing more of the supports that may be needed. It appears to me that there used to be a one-size fits all attitude towards tools, toys and learning materials/technologies. There was a time when a southpaw was lucky just to get a pair of left-handed scissors! Look at what's available.

We also are fortunate for the internet, which makes these technologies, tools and toys much more easily accessible for the people that need them. After all, they're not sold at your local department store, so where would you find them otherwise?

Website #1 - Adaptive Toy Libraries-Assistive Technology of Ohio - I went to this site first because I was intrigued by the title of "adaptive toys." It interested me not just because toys are fun, but because of my son. While he is developing all of his cognitive and motor skills on pace for his age--6 months--I realized, what would we do if he wasn't? The site discusses libraries for people that need these adaptive toys to try out different toys to see if their child likes them and their use warrants buying one. I have already seen the unpredictability of whether a toy will be enjoyed or ignored, but can't imagine what it would feel like to purchase one of these very expensive toys--supply and demand probably really hurts the people buying these products--just to find out your son or daughter was not interested in it. I was disappointed to find that the only Adaptive Toy Library that appears to be within an hour of here is in Parma. There are none in Summit or Portage Counties, and Parma is the only location in Cuyahoga County.

The site does not contain a list of all of the toys and materials available, since each library is different, but does have links to many of the companies that make the products that they use. In browsing some of the things on these sites, a few among the many that I found interesting were:

• Creepster Crawler - a device that safely suspends youngsters in a crawling position in order to help them exercise, get therapy or possibly learn to crawl.
• Chewlry Chewable Jewelry - a sensory solution for children with chewing tendencies.
• Classroom Light Filters - fluorescent light filters that can reduce the harshness of the bright lights for sensitive eyes.
• MeToo Trikes - adaptive tricycles
• Classroom Support Chair - this chair has a harness to help keep the child sitting upright
• and most relevant to this topic - Keyboards/Mouse/Trackballs/Touchscreens - This page contains information on Achievement Products tools that seek to enable children of special needs to better utilize the most common form of technology - the computer. Especially interesting to me of these options was the Big Track Ball, which seems like it'd be a great tool with technology users with weak fine motor skills.

Website #2 - Assistive Technology to Meet K-12 Student Needs - After viewing a site that primarily related to toys and younger children, I decided to look at one that relates more to my job! The first thing that I appreciated about this site was the definition of assistive technologies, which it quoted from IDEA, "'any item, piece of equipment, or product system, whether acquired commercially off the shelf, modified, or customized, that is used to increase, maintain, or improve the functional capabilities of a child with a disability" (IDEA, 1997, 20, USC, Ch. 33, Sec. 1401 [25] US)." While looking through the provided list of examples of assistive technologies I saw technologies that I know of being used in my school system, such as:

• Large-print books - I've heard my wife, who works as a school psychologist in one of our district's elementary schools, mention the use of these.
• Computer screen, text and video magnifiers - A student at my middle school has such poor sight that he has to have a cart with him in each classroom that has a special magnifying system--which is much like a fixed video camera (like an ELMO projector) hooked up to a computer that uses software to magnify whatever is put under the camera--for him to use for any classwork.
• Audio-voice amplification systems--A student I had years ago had hearing damage, so myself and her other teachers wore wireless microphones that sent our voice to individual amplification systems that were in a headband that she wore.

as well as ones that I have not heard of the use of in my school system, but found interesting:

• Braille printer
• Voice language translators
• Portable word processors - After just reading about the AlphaSmart in Chapter 2, this caught my attention.

It is sad to hear of the special needs that some students and adults have to live with. These websites helped me feel confident that, at least nowadays, the educational system does its best to assure that these students' needs are met.

T&L Journal #1 - Online Technology Resources for Teachers

There is a wealth of teacher resources on the internet. The difficult part is not finding resources, it's finding quality resources. To start my process of finding resources to review, I visited my first site.

Resource #1 - "All My Faves - Education" - http://edu.allmyfaves.com/ - This site was recommended to me by my mother--a 1st through 5th grade Computer Technology Teacher. As with most things that are recommended to me, the site went directly to my mental back burner, as I had other things to tend to at the time. I finally looked back to this site now, more than a month later, as the basis for this journal assignment. This is the Education portion of the "All My Faves" website, whose motto is "Why Search?" The site is designed to be a collection of categorized links to popular web pages. The education page contains categories including Academics, Art, Blogs, Books, Computer and more, including the primary content areas. Each category contains upwards of a half dozen links to different websites within that category. This site could be useful to any teacher as a starting point to finding good resources for instructional uses. While it is not all-inclusive and the provided links aren't necessarily for the best sites on the world-wide web, it certainly is a useful site for finding potentially useful resources quickly.

Resource #2 - "Teacher Vision" - http://www.teachervision.fen.com/ - This site was one of the links in All My Faves' Teachers category. The page is dedicated to providing a variety of resources to teachers of all disciplines, as their motto "lesson plans, printables, and more" suggests. The home page has a few different sections such as a "What's New" to the site section, an "Also on TeacherVision" section that covers contemporarily relevant resources (currently it provides links to resources for the Haiti earthquake, Black History Month, Valentine's Day and the Chinese New Year), a section to sign up for their newsletter and the most useful section--one which allows teachers to search for resources and/or lesson plans by grade or subject. Tabs along the top of the page provide links to certain categories of resources, such as grades, subjects, themes, graphic organizers, classroom management and bulletin boards. When using the section of the page that allows for searching within the grades or subjects for resources, 827 resources were found within the area of 8th Grade Mathematics--my current position--while a total of 9529 resources were found within the 8th grade altogether! Clearly this site's value is in it's ability to make a plethora of resources available at a teacher's fingertips. As the homepage says, "TeacherVision is dedicated to helping teachers save time. Find 20,000 pages of classroom-ready lesson plans, printables and resources." Unfortunately, the site requires a subscription, which costs $49.95 per year. This subscription does give you access to a "library of over 180 printable books, 1,000+ downloadale DK Clip Art Images, Funbrain to Go downloadable games . . . " and 50% off the use of "MyGradebook," but it seems a little silly to pay for these resources when the internet has such a wide array of things available. I will say that I may try out their free 7-day trial when I have the time to look through the resources. Will it be worth the price to simplify the search for easily accessible quality teaching resources?

Resource #3 - BrainPOP - http://www.brainpop.com/ - This site, which I also discovered from the All My Faves site, is a subscription based service that contains resources for teaching all of the main curriculum areas in grades K-12 (While 3-12 is the main focus of BrainPOP, they have K-2 resources available through their service called BrainPOP Jr.). The three main components of the site are instructional cartoons, a "Q&A" feature for students to use and opportunities for students to self-assess through quizzes. Most of the resources involve the likeable, somewhat comedic and informative cartoon characters Tim and Moby, a young man and robot, who take part in most of the videos and are the answer-providers in the "Q&A" videos. Within each curricular area--Science, Social Studies, English, Math, Arts & Music, Health and Technology--the resources are further divided into sub-categories, such as algebra or data analysis in math. While it is a subscription based service, many of the sites resources are free, as I was able to access multiple resources without even using their free trial membership. Some of their other resources include do-it-yourself experiments (with Bob the ex-lab rat!) and a section dedicated to helping teachers use the site's resources which includes a state standards search tool. All of the videos are closed-captioned enabled (a nice assistive technology add-in), play through flash player plug-ins (which makes it easy to use on most any computer) and are matched up with the aforementioned multiple-choice quizzes. These quizzes can be taken before or after the movie and can be taken as practice, where your answers are checked as you go, or as an assessment, where you find out your score & see what you did wrong afterwards (either on the webpage, through your email or as a printable score). The printable quiz results could be useful if a teacher asked his or her students to view a particular video and then take the associated quiz; the students could then print their quiz results in order to earn a grade in the class. Also, the quizzes can be printed out, so that teachers could use them after a class watched a video together. Overall, this is a great resource which could be very useful if used appropriately as an addition to a teacher's lesson plan. It's best characteristic is the fact that students would almost certainly find the sites videos and activities to be engaging and fun.

Resource #4 - MathMovesU - http://www.mathmovesu.com/ - When first visiting this website, I was greeted with a welcoming message that invited me to "explore . . . have fun and pick up some cool math skills" as well as an applet that directed me to choose my character (I selected a guy in a hot dog costume) as well as put in some information about myself. After getting settled in, I found that I (when I say I, I mean my hot dog costume-wearing avatar guy) was able to move about through this site learning math facts, solving problems and, well, exploring. I found that the site was interesting, very user-friendly in a near-video-game-like manner and would be pretty engaging for middle schoolers, especially younger middle schoolers. This website was designed by the Raytheon company--a sponsor of my things involving middle school math--in an effort to create experiences that will engage middle school students in mathematics learning. As their information page explains, "Raytheon's MathMovesU is an innovative program designed to engage middle school students with math whe their interest in the subject typically declines. Algebra, geometry, decimals, fractions & word problems combine with topics kids are passionate about; sports, music & fashion." The site is designed to be used by students or as instructional tools by parents or teachers. It features resources for the parents and teachers to use, such as printable practice worksheets and a classroom guide. I think that this site could be useful for a math teacher like myself, though I would not use it on a daily basis. It could be used occasionally to supplement lessons, but it's best use may be for allowing the students to do self-directed explorations during free time or enrichment times. It could definitely be a great thing to throw in to a lesson plan in a "All students who have their assignment done get to go explore on MathMovesU" kind of way or as something to keep part of a class busy and engaged (therefore, not busy work!) while the rest of the class participates in a remedial lesson, intervention, review or make-up work time.

Resource #5 - Google Docs (Forms) - http://docs.google.com - A surprisingly low number of people--teachers in specific--are familiar with the great tools available through Google Docs. Even fewer are familiar with the most teacher-friendly of those tools--Google Doc forms. Using these was recently recommended to me. While the other resources are neat for sharing files (and the editing of those files) between teachers or members of student groups, Google Doc forms provide a wonderful opportunity for simple auto-collected and auto-organized online homework assignments or information forms. A teacher can make a form with a collection of questions in a collection of formats--text, paragraph text (longer than regular text), multiple choice, checkboxes, choose from a list, scale or grid. The designer can then share the link to the form as a web address with his or her students. After the students complete the form, the teacher can then view their responses in a summary format or in an automatically organized spreadsheet. A teacher could find many classroom management uses for this, such as collecting and organizing all students' schedules and parents' contact information. They could even use these forms for themselves only. For example, if a teacher wanted to organize parent contact records better, that teacher could make a form that asks some simple questions--what parent did you contact, who is the student, what was the date, what was the topic of the contact--and fill out the form each time they contact a parent, thus creating a spreadsheet that would show their history of parent contacts! It could also be used for simple homework assignments: not only would the students not need to remember to hand in a paper, but the teachers wouldn't need to collect or grade a stack of papers, they could just look through the spreadsheet! I am certain that i will utilize this resource in the future.

While searching for my 5 resources, I found that there were thousands of teacher resources out there on the world wide web. Unfortunately, more often than not, they are not exemplary resources. However, some of the good ones can make up for wasted search time! The internet provides us with resources that would never be available to us otherwise - and it's worth the searching!

TECHNOLOGY AND LEARNING Journal Blog

For the Spring 2010 semester, this blog will be used for my journal entries in the course Technology and Learning.