Tech Integration Defense

For more visit http://patte261.googlepages.com/technologyintegrationproject

Tech Plan

My Technology Integration Project is designed as part of a 3rd grade Language Arts unit. I decided to put a new spin on a very traditional assignment, by asking students to create a “digital book report” using a new medium, VoiceThread. Students will work in small groups to create a short synopsis of the story, detailing the specific literary elements (e.g.: character, setting, plot, etc.) along with a review of the book itself. Once the VoiceThreads are complete they will be compiled into a wiki that both students and parents will have access to.

The project aims to meet the following expectations:

Grade Level Content Expectation - Reading Comprehension

R.CM.03.02 retell in sequence the story elements of grade-level narrative text and
major idea(s) and relevant details of grade-level informational text.

Michigan Educational Technology Standard – Technology Communication Tools

By the end of Grade 5 each student will use a variety of media and formats to create and edit products (e.g., presentations, newsletters, brochures, web pages) to communicate information and ideas to various audiences.

Click here to view my complete Technology Integration Plan

I plan on using VoiceThread to showcase my Tech Plan.

Podcasting

Whew, my first podcasting experience is over and done with! Let me just start of by saying I am an avid podcast listener but I have never made my own…this project has definitely made me appreciate how much all of those podcasters out there put into their craft just so that I can have some free entertainment!

The mini-lesson I developed is for use in a fourth grade classroom and focuses on a Market Economics benchmark, “Students will use fundamental principles and concepts of economics to understand economic activity in a market economy”. I focused on bartering and how these monetary transactions have changed over time. Here are the links to my audio and video podcasts.

Besides a teacher creating his/her own podcast for instructional purposes, I really like the collaboration with students that Bob Sprankle uses in his class’s “Room 208” podcast. Although some of the technical/formatting aspects of podcasting may take a bit of getting used to, the idea of students contributing to a class podcast is really appealing to me. Mr. Sprankle discusses how his students are more motivated and confident in their own writing because they know that it will be shared with a wide audience of listeners. Additionally, many of my TE classes have discussed the benefits of students writing for a range of purposes, and writing to contribute to a podcast does just that. In addition providing an innovative new outlet for writing, podcasting will allow students an opportunity to practice skills associated with spoken discourse, which is another main area emphasized in Language Arts instruction.

I know that I am still getting a feel for it, but I can definitely see myself ncorporating podcasting into my future instruction. After all, Audacity is free, a microphone is cheap, and most computers come equipped with some sort of program that will help you turn your podcast into a vidcast…you just can’t beat that!

Civil War Map Mash-Up

View Larger Map
For this week’s wiki-project I chose to map our 5 sites that were important during our Civil War. This map would be appropriate to use in a middle school history class (grades 5-8) as a small part of a larger study about the Civil War.

I remember that my own study of the civil war quickly became a memorization game of the names of a bunch of important generals and dates of a bunch of important battles. I think we often neglect to realize how important the geography of the civil war is; key events were happening on both the northern and southern fronts of this war. I believe that Google maps is an easy way to organize this information and begin to get a visual understanding of what was happening and when.

One of the nice features about Googlemaps is the ability to save your map, view your map, and then go back and edit your map. Instead of inundating students with a whole bunch of battle sites, capitals, and key places, this type of map mash-up has the potential to be added on to as the study of the Civil War progresses. In my own mash-up I chose to include a date with every site on my map. Most history classes study things sequentially, a map like this has the potential to build upon itself, a feature that will lend itself to a visual understanding of how and where this war progressed.

Obviously there were more than 5 key events that happened during the Civil War –I merely chose five to get started. Incorporating a mash-up into a history unit creates the potential for students to contribute to the map too. With so many key events and so many key places, a teacher could use the map’s collaboration feature and each student could be research one event and create a single site on the map mash-up. When combined, the class would have a fairly comprehensive picture of what they had been studying –which I think is pretty cool!

Mock Interview Reflection

My avatar was a picture of stick figure drawn on a chalkboard.

The questions I felt most comfortable answering were definitely the first two: “Tell me about yourself” and “Why have you chosen teaching as your profession?” The answers to both of these questions are almost instinctual. It makes perfect sense that they were placed at the front of the interview so that candidates are able to ease their way into the more difficult questions. Even though I felt confident in my answers for these two questions (I mean, really how badly can you screw up “Tell me about yourself”?) listening to the tips/pointers at the end of the voice thread gave me some ideas of how to better refine my answers (for example, keeping things focused on the educational aspects of my life and providing “teasers”). Even though I may feel comfortable with my answers there is always room for improvement.

The hardest questions were those that addressed parental concern about his/her child using the internet and the student visiting an inappropriate website. To be honest, these questions were hard because I’d never really thought about them before. In TE class after TE class the same ideas are drilled into our heads, things like classroom management, diverse learning styles, or individualized instruction, however these types of concerns about the use of technology are never addressed. I wanted to answer to the best of my ability while still trying to be quick on my feet (I certainly won’t have time to erase and re-record during a real interview) but I was still unsure of the quality of my answers.

This mock interview was helpful on several fronts. First off, it gave us some common questions to familiarize ourselves with. While some of them we might have seen coming, others we might not have. It can only help to hear these questions and begin to think about how we can effectively provide answers during real interviews. Secondly, I’m glad I got to hear my classmates’ responses. It provided me with a whole lot of “Why didn’t I think of that?” or “Good point!” moments. Finally, Joe’s suggestions provided to be valuable to listen to. He provided great (and simple) pointers and that I know I will be able to incorporate into future interview experiences.

Creating Voice Threads

I chose to make a that could be used as part of a lesson. In this Voice Thread, I focused on homophones --words that sound the same but have different meanings. I knew that this was a topic in which visual aids, like pictures and doodling, could help clarify confusion.

I found this week’s project to be very helpful; I can definitely envision myself using Voice Threads in my future classroom. The process of creating a Voice Thread was very user-friendly but there still seem to be tons of great features that would be helpful teachers (like multiple identities on one account or being able to moderate the comments left on your thread). Once I got my account up and running it was smooth sailing. I used FlckrCC to grab some images for my thread about homophones, plugged in my microphone and I was ready to go. Like other commenters on the Voice Thread about doodling, I too found the tool very helpful. In my Voice Thread I used doodling to differentiate between the two homophones I had up on the slide. I hoped that this would highlight the fact that I was pronouncing two different words. I did make several mistakes while recording my comment, thankfully erasing these errors was super easy!

The examples posted on the class blog as well as the Voice Threads I looked at on our Google reader served up some inspiration on how Voice Threads might be used in my future class. As I said before, creating a voice thread was very easy to do. I think that with some guidance even the youngest students could contribute to a Voice Thread. I thought the idea of combining all of the class’ ideas onto a single voice thread, like the Federal Holiday Voice Thread, would be a nice way to showcase student work. Plus, Voice Threads are easy to share. I’m sure that many parents and relatives across the country would be interested in looking at student created Voice Threads. The examples of compiling different Voice Threads in wiki’s has the potential for really interesting possibilities. Students could collaborate in Voice Thread wiki’s with students across the hall or across the country. Because Voice Threads are so versatile the possibilities are endless!

Creative Commons and Adding Images

Photo Attribution

Original Image: "Home of Chicago Cubs"

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/31/58806696_98f800166a.jpg

By: brighter than sunshine

Released under an Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/deed.en

Before doing this assignment I had a vague idea that many of the ways that I have become used to finding and/or using images from the web wasn’t 100% on the up and up. If a student would have asked me how to find an image I probably would have directed them to Google images, AltaVista, or some other similar search engine. As far as citing an image goes, I would have had no idea what to suggest. Perhaps I would have told the student to include the web address from which they took the image. Even though I knew that this was not the right protocol, I guess I’d never taken the time to look into what I should be directing students to do.

This week has definitely provided me with a better understanding of Creative Commons and what is appropriate in terms of using other people’s work. The links to the videos and comics that were provided in the class blog were not only crucial to my understanding o f this topic but also have the potential to be very informative for my future students. After this week’s lesson I feel more confident in responding to students questions about locating and using images from the web. Now I know how to utilize sites like FlickrCC as well as properly cite the images I use –all of which is information that I can pass on to my future students!