Thing 18 Virtual Classrom

Virtual classroom experiences can be tricky.  As I navigated through the “Land of Online Learning” looking at the requirements from a student perspective, I was reminded just how important collaboration is to success in the virtual classroom. There are so many slippery slopes where student can fall down and it is possible that the student will never recover from those falls. As a private school, the swamp of surprises has held up some students from taking an online class for lack of a mentor to be sure the student is registered in an online course.  Next is the importance of a student having enough connected time to access the material he or she is to cover. Then the slippery slope of completion. I have seen such a difference between several students that I have mentored - some get right into the work, work steadily, and finish before time is up for the class while others make excuses and never get up to speed nor complete the course they started. For me, the infrequent feedback and lack of time with the teacher that is synchronous really thwarted my initial work into the 21 Things for 21st Century Teachers. As an adult learner, I needed to know that my work was being critiqued and I needed feedback to feel confident about my forward movement. My students need that same measure of confidence.

The CAPSpace (TWICE) site was an amazing resource that I think I could use more if I was a teacher of an English, History, or World Languages class. Most of the projects I saw were in those categories. I like the idea of using video conferencing to connect with classrooms across the state or around the world. I would like to develop a network of professionals that I could “bring into my classroom” via skype for a videoconferencing presentation on career items necessary for student success.  I think that video conferencing has power over even watching videos because an individual can talk back in forth in real time and see the responses of his or her fellow conference attendee.

I would like to use moodle to extend my classroom online. There are several different ways I could use moodle to streamline the careers course I teach which would make it easier to give students feedback as they work through their career development plan. An online classroom experience using moodle or google drive would allow students to communicate and collaborate as they learn new information and synthesize the information into different mediums for redistribution to others. I have loved the way that Google drive has allowed me to give feedback on work that students have completed and to see the transitions in their learning as work is reviewed and critiqued. I think this kind of review and critique allows students to use their critical thinking skills and decision making skills to develop the best learning products. This transfer of knowledge from introduction to completion is a great reason to use a virtual classroom to moderate the flow of information. This moderation is one way my teaching and learning will be positively affected and it will help my students meet several NETS-S.

Thing 17 Professional Learning Networks

Wow, MACUL is free!  I had a friend who talked about attending the MACUL conference and the information he was sharing was excellent and gave me tools that I have been able to use in my classroom to improve instruction. It is awesome that the purpose of MACUL is to keep up with the ever changing world of educational technology, collaborate with people who enjoy using technology in their classroom, and learn new things from those that are members in MACUL. I can contribute to an organization like this by my excitement to use technology to improve instruction and support my students new learning.

LearnPort is great and it is how I learned about the Calhoun ISD courses. I like LearnPort because it leads me to webinars that I could watch to grow as an individual and get involved with groups of people who are doing technology based things like I do. I am glad places like LearnPort exist because it inspires me to connect with others to grow as a professional.

The purpose of Twitter, Facebook, and MACULspace is to connect with others who are excited about learning about what others are doing and how we can join others in doing things we find interesting. I see the greatest pro of Twitter is its linear nature. I can go through my tweetdeck with my multiple columns of hashtags and read what is important to me with #edtech or #edchat or #mathed. Tweetdeck helps me not be distracted by streams of information that are unimportant to me or totally off the topic I am interested in at the moment. Another pro of Twitter is that you can follow what another person tweets about without being a member on twitter and without them necessarily following you back. For people that are hesitant to use a social media platform, twitter allows an individual to see a stream of tweets without requiring a sign in. But that leads to a con for Twitter where if I want to communicate with someone on Twitter, I must be signed in to my account. A pro for Facebook is that many people use it personally so that a transition to professional use isn’t so daunting. However a con of Facebook is that you have little control over the stream of content that comes through your news feed and much of the content can be distracting from a professional viewpoint. Although MACUL looks like a great professional organization, MACULspace seems to have gone the way of Myspace, because there seemed to be little relevant new content there. Instead MACULspace seemed to point to twitter as the location to get up to date information. I know that I appreciate social networking sites that make my professional growth easier, not more complicated and distracted. For me Twitter has become my go to social media and networking site for its ease of use and linear stream of content.

Thing 12 Evaluation & Assessment Tools

Currently in my school we have a student information system, RenWeb, which allows access to student demographic information, grades, and medical information. It has been helpful for parent communication and co-worker communication because we can see how students are doing in each others courses. I look forward to using course management systems like moodle to streamline how students access and complete work. Data warehousing of item level information for assessment would also be helpful for teachers to use to inform instruction. The biggest challenge right now is getting our data into a tool that allows us to run reports, find similarities and differences, and look at trends.

The FERPA/HIPAA quiz was informative because I wasn’t aware of some of the particulars of FERPA. I thought that once a student turned 18 and graduated from high school, that their parent no longer had access to their child’s educational record. I learned that was false, as long as the parent still claimed the child on their IRS forms, the parent had the right to see the child’s educational record. Another interesting thing I learned is the lack of length of time required for maintaining student records. As a counselor I get calls all the time asking for verification of attendance for students who did not graduate from our institution or for verification that students completed GED testing at our school. I often do not have any records, yet other educational agencies expect that I will have them. It seems obvious that a student should be allowed to see his or her educational record, but then I wonder what purpose it would hold. Keeping FERPA information close at hand is probably the best way to decide if a record should be shared or not.

Rubrics allow me to give students more freedom to complete requirements for a given task. It also allows them to self score themselves to see if they are completing work that is worthy of demonstrating mastery and advanced skill. It helps me to better assess in an objective way, rather than subjectively.

Educational surveys like Google forms are great to collect large amounts of data and summarize that data for further consideration. I used the Google Forms as a survey tool to determine where students were feeling the most need to get practice for the upcoming ACT. In the past I have used Survey Monkey to do needs assessments for our school guidance program. The ease of use for both Google Forms and Survey Monkey make them very user friendly surveying tools.

Thing 14: Productivity Tools

I really enjoyed learning about some of the productivity tools that were in this lesson. I had never heard of Zamzar before and I think it has great possibilities for my work. Being able to convert a text file to a pdf so a student or parent can’t cause the format to be ruined is priceless. Zamzar also allows me to convert files that are in older formats into newer formats especially some work that I did using Corel WordPerfect.

I love using my Google Calendar. I have an app on my phone that takes me directly to all the Google Calendars that I subscribe to so I can keep up with both school and personal events in one place. Each calendar has a different color so I can reference who is doing what and where. I could see using Google Calendar to note test dates and other unique homework assignments. I use a Google spreadsheets for my quarterly plans currently but I could transition those assignments to a Google Calendar for students and parents to follow.

I like using productivity tools like this that are online web based rather than computer application based because I can share my work with others in the cloud without having multiple versions of a resource. I liked using Evernote and its web clipper function to create notebooks. I haven’t shared any yet, but I think that Evernote is a tool I would like to use for students to create portfolios of what they are studying. I see it complimenting diigo as a research organizational tool. I appreciate using a tool like Evernote because it will help keep my class paperless in the research process yet organized.

A big disadvantage of all these great tools is that if the internet isn’t working or the electronic device isn’t working, students, parents, and coworkers can’t use the tools. Another disadvantage is that sometimes lessons get thwarted from forward progress because access is limited by IT stipulations on which what tools are allowed for use in a school. As a technology using educator, it is my challenge to educate my co-workers, administrators, and IT staff about the great tools available and the rationale for their use.

21ThingsBCK Thing 16 Research and Reference Tools

I use mel.org all of the time to better educate myself about different new concepts. Since I am trained as a guidance counselor, I prefer to use APA style for the citations. I am going to compare Infotrac Junior Edition and Infotrac Student Edition.

I looked at Infotrac Junior Edition and read the article

Instagram users should wise up. (2012, December 20). CNN Wire. Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA312576238&v=2.1&u=lom_accessmich&it=r&p=STOJ&sw=w

I like that it had full text option and that peer reviewed articles could also be found in this database.  I searched for dolphins and it took me to a Science News article, without pictures, but there was a link to the actual magazine with color photos that would be appropriate for all ages. I think that Infotrac Junior is a great database with access to great full text articles from nice colorful magazines that are attractive to young people.

I looked at Infotrac Student Edition and read the article

Ehrenberg, R. (2012, December 29). Scientists take on Twitter: social media comes into its own as a tool and a subject for study. Science News, 182(13), 22. Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA313796244&v=2.1&u=lom_accessmich&it=r&p=STOM&sw=w

Infotrac Student Edition seemed basically the same as Infotrac Junior edition. It think both are very simple to use for young people, intuitive, and clear about the results from credible sources given based on a particular topic. This clarity makes both databases appropriate for middle school and high school research.

For the advanced searching I used the Academic OneFile and read the article

Angelova, R., Lipczak, M., Milios, E., & Pralat, P. (2010). Investigating the properties of a social bookmarking and tagging network. International Journal of Data Warehousing and Mining, 6(1), 1+. Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA215246715&v=2.1&u=lom_accessmich&it=r&p=AONE&sw=w

I appreciated the color pdf file where I could read all about social bookmarking and discussing the properties that were found within the social bookmarking constructs.

I think it was a really useful database with peer reviewed journals that had pdf of the exact article so that I could see the mathematical expressions and graphs in their original form.

Another article I read in the Academic OneFile was

Erwin, H. E., & Fedewa, A. L. (2011). Stability balls and students with attention and hyperactivity concerns: implications for on-task and in-seat behavior. AJOT: American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 65(4), 393+. Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA263786116&v=2.1&u=lom_accessmich&it=r&p=AONE&sw=w

Bushong, S. (2009). Keeping Students on the Ball. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 55(21). Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA192644092&v=2.1&u=lom_accessmich&it=r&p=AONE&sw=w

Was another very short article that was about stability balls.

These articles are useful as I look at participating in a research project with my students. Having information like this available is really useful to a teacher and allows me to share information with students that is from a reputable source. It is appropriate for high school students and the content is much more higher academic so it would require additional research skills in order for students to make the best use of this content because the articles come from peer reviewed journals, not from magazines.

I liked the citation makers on each article so that students could create an annotated bibliography of their research with a link back to the mel.org database location where it was originally found. Being able to use APA or MLA is useful depending on which format is required in a particular discipline. I think that using a citation maker like this should begin by grade 3 because by then students can understand the concept of written work belonging to another and they can understand how important it is to properly attribute material they use from another person within their own written work.

Thing 9 Copyright and Creative Commons Reflection

It was interesting that among my senior students and faculty that answered my questions there was a difference in how photos and text would be treated. Seventy-seven percent of responders answered no to the statement “any photo on the internet is in the public domain and I may use it without attributing it to its creator.” Sixty two percent of responders answered no to the statement “any text I share on social media like Facebook, twitter, or a blog is copyrighted to me immediately upon publishing it to the internet”. Sixty two percent of responders answered yes to the statement “any picture or video I post on the internet is my content and is copyrighted to me.”  Seventy-seven percent of responders answered true to “Copyright protection is given to an author or creator of a work for his or her lifetime and 70 years after the individual's death.” Ninety-two  percent of responders answered yes to “It is best to ask the owner of a work for permission to use it rather than be found in violation of copyright.”  Eighty-five  percent of responders answered true to “Registration of your created work allows you to have a public record that you created the work in question if there is an issue of copyright violation.” Fifty-four percent of responders answered no to “Using a Creative Commons attribution allows another user to use content someone else created as long as the new creator shares the new content with others.”  Fifty-four percent of responders answered yes to “You can use short video clips from another individual and put together a montage of these clips. You own the new montage.” Fifty-four percent of responders answered yes to “I can use pictures I find on the internet for backgrounds on a presentation without citing who took the pictures.” Fifty-four percent of responders answered yes to “As long as I don't make money off of what copyrighted content I use, it is okay to use it for my purposes.”

When I use Creative Commons I feel like it gives other educators a helping hand in creating something for their classroom without reinventing the wheel. I think that more educators should use Creative Commons and make their great ideas open for others to build upon their work and share the newly created work more. Collaboration is so important and Creative Commons gives an excellent vehicle to make this collaboration less cumbersome with respect to copyright and fair use. Educators have the best interest of their students in mind as they create their new tools. Creative Commons allows great minds to create even greater text and media to share and strengthen education.

Thing 9 Copyright and Fair Use Results

Results of the Copyright and Fair Use Quiz