A Community Letter

Community Letter

Dear Parents,

We are excited to inform you of a new aspect of our curriculum that will provide a more well rounded education.  As our student body continues to grow into an even more diverse and multicultural population, it is important that we continue to strive to provide each student with the highest quality of education, regardless of their background.

Throughout the school year we will be implementing aspects of the curriculum which will be taught from the perspective of another country or culture.  We already have innovative and exciting projects planned for Black History Month, Cinco de Mayo, as well as several other important holidays and historical events spanning a multitude of countries and cultures.  

We feel that this aspect of our curriculum will benefit the children by opening up their eyes and minds to the ways of other countries and cultures.  Through this new direction, we hope to not only educate, but to create an environment of knowledge and acceptance of things which may initially come as unfamiliar to our students.  It is important for the students to understand and accept that there are different cultures and aspects of life than what they may be familiar with.

We hope you will join us in ushering in this new and exciting aspect to our curriculum and please feel free to contact us with any comments, questions or concerns you or your children may have.

Thank you, and let’s all have a productive school year!

Sincerely,

Jeff Lampack
Chair of Curriculum

Learning Outcomes

At the beginning of this class, I was very intimidated by the thought of having to rely on technology.  I have always been weary of technology and assumed that it was unreliable and would fail on me when I needed it most.  Throughout the semester, I have learned that this is not the case, and I have learned and experimented with numerous ways that I can actually use technology to my advantage. 

I am now aware that as teachers in the Web 2.0 world, it is our jobs to keep up with the ways that the world is evolving and to adapt to the technology that students are using in their free time.  If a student can use technology to stimulate their interests in their free time, it would be unproductive to attempt to gain their attention with something that is dull and uninteresting.  Through the use of programs such as Voice Thread, powerpoint, and many different search engines and web quests, I have discovered numerous ways to make learning seem like something more than the same old lecture style or using a paper and pen.

I was intimidated at first, there were many things I was not sure of, and I needed help along the way, but I am proud to have been able to complete all of the assignments.  I have completed assignments and used resources that I had no idea existed or thought that they were too complicated for me.  I am glad that I had the opportunity to take this class now and get a head start toward being a Web 2.0 teacher.  I now have a "tool kit" of resources that I can use before I ever step into the classroom to teach for my first day. 

I still have a lot to learn, as is clear by the WoW presentations of my fellow classmates.  Everyone did a fantastic job, and it was a great experience to be able to see some of the things that everyone else was working on.  Now, in addition to what I learned on my own, I now have an every bigger "tool kit" of resources thanks to my classmates presentations, which made me aware of many other resources that I did not know existed.  I look forward to playing around with some of those resources in my spare time and being able to understand them even more and figuring out how I can use them to teach. 

WoW Projects

I thought that everyone did a fantastic job presenting their WoW Projects.  Being able to listen to presentations about these examples of technology made me aware of so many things that I never even knew existed.  We are all technological learners, and it can be frustrating at times to try and figure out what things online are legitimate and which things work for us, and being able to watch these presentations really made me aware of some of the truly great things that can be done educationally on a computer and using the internet. 

These projects, and this class in general, have provided us all with a "tool kit" as we either continue teaching or move closer to becoming teachers.  This will truly give us the advantage of having knowledge of technology and programs, web sites, and strategies that we have already experimented with and that we know work for us.  Personally, learning about this stuff know will take a lot of stress away from my life than would have been there if I tried to learn about technology in education while I was already teaching and didn't have the opportunity to really test it out and play around with so many different options like we were able to do in this class.

On my personal WoW project on "Research Tools and 21st Century Literacy Professional Development", it was a very rewarding experience.  These are tools that can help teachers and students to better organize their searches on the internet, as well as ensure that they are finding helpful and reliable information from safe sources on the internet.  I gathered all of my information directly from the web sites, so those web sites are my references. 

Click here to view my WoW project!!!! 

Teaching Newsletter

Today I created a teaching newsletter for the first time.  I created it in the content area of Social Studies because that is the area which I have the most experience in and will hopefully one day be teaching.  This was an interesting and helpful project because it made me not only learn about Education 2.0 but it it challenged me to think of ways I would explain it to parents.  In many cases, parents are not as concerned or impressed with technical definitions and are simply looking for a simple explanation on how this is going to help their child. 

Explaining Education 2.0 to parents and practicing explaining how certain class assignments will incorporate elements of technology is definitely an aspect of education which will become more and more prevalent as we more into the future.

Engrade Review

After signing up and reviewing this web site, I think it is really confusing.  I don't think this is a software that I would choose to use as a teacher in real life.  I like the fact that it is easy to manually enter the names of the students and the number of assignments, as well as how much of the final grade percentage each assignment will be worth.  It is also a nice feature to be able to drop the lowest grade.

However, all of those nice features do not make the site any less confusing.  I have been playing around with the web site for hours and have still not been able to figure out how to enter grades for what each student would have earned on the assignments, so I can not even utilize any of the grade calculation aspects of the web site.

My suggestion would be to make the program more user friendly and maybe have a tutorial for teachers on how to use it.  It needs to be more clearly labeled what each section is worth and how to properly use each section of the web site. 

If a teacher can actually fight with the program long enough to actually figure out how to use it, I can understand why a program like this one would be useful to students and teachers.  The ability for parents to see their child's grades can be helpful in being proactive and contacting the teacher before any severe academic problems arise with their children.  I know a lot of students who receive poor grades often either attempt to hide them from their parents, or do not tell their parents right away.  The ability for a parent to be able to log on and see their child's grade regardless of if they actually show them their classwork or not.

Below is a picture of a grading matrix I attempted to create.  It includes the assignments I created and how much of the final grade each assignment was worth.  Unfortunately I was unable to figure out how to enter grades, so I was unable to experiment with what comes next as far as the grading process.  

Digital Story

Today I created my first Digital Story.  This was the first time I had ever created a presentation like this with any program other than Power Point.  It was stressful at first because I consider myself somewhat of an expert on Power Point and have become very comfortable creating presentations with the program to give in front of my classes.

However, once I became accustomed to the Photo Story 3 program and started to get the hang of using it, the project became fun and easier.  I chose to do my story on the United States use of the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima at the end of World War II because I am studying to become a Social Studies teacher and it is easier for me to teach my own content obviously.

I particularly like being able to narrate the video myself, as it can be a little more exciting for people watching the presentation to hear a real voice, rather than having to read the words themselves. 



Click here to view my page about my Digital Story on Hiroshima

Tools for Collaboration

This week we learned about some new tools to help us with collaboration.  Collaboration is a key element in education because when multiple individuals work together toward a goal it can be accomplished faster and with more effectiveness. 

I explored three specific online tools for collaboration which I felt were especially helpful.  The first cool was Google for Educators.  It is an online discussion board where the user can browse, ask, or answer questions pertaining to education.  This is helpful because chances are any questions one has about education have probably already been asked and answered, so the user can simply browse for their answer.  In the event that their question has not been asked and answered, then the user has the ability to create a discussion and ask their question to the online community. 

The second and third collaboration tools which I explored where online video web conferencing platforms.  FlashMeeting and IT4ALL.  This can be more helpful to some users, as message board discussion forums can be an impersonal method of communication.  The ability to see, hear and speak to another person can be much more effective and help the user understand.

I was not aware of any of these tools before taking this class and being asked to explore them.  Now that I know about them, I am very happy to know that they exist to help me in my career as an educator if I should need the collaborative help of others.