Lesson 8 - Educational Websites

Bloom’s Website:

http://www.uwsp.edu/education/lwilson/curric/newtaxonomy.htm

This above link takes you to a page that discusses into detail Bloom’s Taxonomy. It is a curriculum page for Dr. Leslie Owen Wilson. On this page, Dr. Wilson has listed a lot of hotlinks to information on Blooms as well as organized informational resources that are easily understood. As an undergrad I remember learning a lot Bloom’s different classifications of learning. Until looking at these different websites about Bloom’s, I had forgotten every part of the Blooms Pyramid. For a while now, Bloom’s Taxonomy has been revised, Dr. Wilson’s website compare/contrast the differences between the old and new pyramids. These valuable resources about Bloom’s Taxonomy can be used by almost anyone who reads the different tables provide on the website that breaks down what it truly means to “Synthesize”, “Analyze”, etc. I think that every principal should use the website above or any website that explains Blooms, at the beginning of every school year. This would help the staff keep all children’s learning styles in mind as they plan lessons.

#2 SpicyNodes:

SpicyNodes is a website found here: http://www.spicynodes.org/

To be honest I had never heard of this website/concept mapping program until I followed the link in class. I truly feel that this will be one of the greatest things that I will be able to use next year. Students should always use some sort of outline when writing a paper or should view new information in an organized manner if they want to be the most successful that they can be. I believe that this website takes away the “boring” factor for outlining thoughts such a brainstorming for a paper. I have already shared this link with my co-worker who teaches writing and she loves it. This webpage takes general concept mapping but allows the user to take the information to the next level. It allows you to add color, music (audio), post already created maps, support from the creators, etc. One of the best things about this website is that it is FREE! I would recommend this website to anyone who is an educator!

#3 Brain Information:

http://www.dana.org/news/cerebrum/detail.aspx?id=28896

I found the article linked above to be very informative for why it is important to learn about the brain and how to incorporate a little bit of neuroscience in the classroom. The above article is, “Promoting Brain-Science Literacy in the K-12 Classroom” by Michaela Labriole. In this article, Labriole discusses how it is important for us as educators not only know who to teach to our students, but also how the brain functions so that we know best practices for teaching. I really thought this article was great at connecting to our class, because it talks about how technology can be used to help bridge the gap of teaching about the brain in class. For example, many computer software programs exist that make learning about the brain a fun interactive lesson.  The article also gives a lot of suggestions for how to incorporate knowledge of the brain in class. For example, teachers can utilize the strong connection between neuroscience and other subject areas to boost scientific literacy. Some students find certain topics in neuroscience, such as neurotransmitters, very abstract. By tying in other subject areas, especially through hands-on techniques, educators can improve student understanding. They can easily turn neurons into an art project by using pipe cleaners and other materials to model different structures, or into an exercise in physical education by asking students to use their arms as axons and dendrites to pass a ball that serves as a neurotransmitter.

Overall I learned a lot about the different types of educational websites that our available to educators on the web for no cost! It amazes me how many free resources are available to educators and that can help improve classroom academics. What’s even more amazing is that most teachers don’t know they exist. I’m going to be sure to share my knowledge learned from this class with my co-workers!

Lesson 8 - Educational Software

One type of educational software that is available at my school is Read Naturally. Our school district just purchased this software at the beginning of this past year.  I don’t teach language arts, I’m the social studies teacher, but there are times when I have students with special needs that may need to use this program in my area with computers. It’s important for me to know about the program so I can help the students if they have questions, and also so I can help other teachers since I’m one of our school’s technology coordinators.

 Read Naturally is a software program that develops fluency, supports vocabulary, and promotes comprehension.  Read Naturally has many different steps involved in the process. Each student has a login name, and get to pick a story on their level.  After picking a story, they can make predictions based on the title, picture clues, etc. They read along with the story (using headphones) and they can do this several times to hear it over and over again. This can help with pronunciation, expression, and phrasing. While practicing they can use a microphone to talk into, and practice reading the story, and practice pronunciation. The next step has them answer comprehension questions about the story. The last step is for the student to read the story to the teacher, and the teacher will document their errors (if any) and then see if the student has met their goal of no more than 3 errors, and answered all the comprehension questions correctly. Although, I have not used this with my students yet since I’m still learning it and it’s SUMMER BREAK!!! I will definitely use this software next school year.

There are some challenges that come with this software. One is the computer’s we have. Our school is next on the district upgrade list (thank goodness) which means we are going through the process of starting to get new computers in our school. We have very limited access to computers in our school, and a lot of the computers that we do have are so old that they don’t really run the program in a manner that benefits the students (really slow). Also, we only have 10 computers in the 5^th grade, so this can cause an issue of who is using them, and at what times. Luckily for me I have a lot of parent involvement at my school, so if I need extra help at getting the computers ready and students prepared to use Read Naturally, I know I can count on them to be there to help me! I look forward to seeing my students’ reading abilities continue to grow!

Lesson 6: Using/Creating WebQuest

This week in class I learned how to create something that I’m definitely going to use in my classroom from now on!! This wonderful thing that I’m talking about is a WebQuest. As an undergrad at Eastern Kentucky University I learned a lot about the benefits of making a WebQuest for the classroom. I knew that they serve as a fun interactive way for students to achieve higher levels of thinking.

WebQuest provide a break from the normal lecture/read from the book routine. I know that when I took Social Studies in elementary school, all we ever did was read from the text. Since I vowed not to do the same, I created a 5^th Grade leveled social studies WebQuest this week. It is about the Causes of the Revolutionary War. You can view it by going to http://www.zunal.com/webquest.php?w=104477. My WebQuest centers on making a timeline about the major causes of the war. I feel that timeline’s are a great manner for students to not only learn important dates, but when they are done with illustrations and extensive research, they can be ways that students can fully comprehend important events in history.

Something new that I learned this week is that not all WebQuest actually have to extensively use the “Web”. Before this class, I always assumed that in order for students to complete a WebQuest in class that we would all have to be able to access the internet at the same time. I found out that this isn’t really true! Sometimes it can be a mixture of both class work and internet work. I took what I learned this week and applied it to my actual self-made WebQuest. I decided to make my WebQuest so that students would have stations set up all around the classroom that they could move to for research specifically available for a Cause of the Revolution. While some of the people in their group were busy researching information at a station in the class, other students could be online researching information about the same event, or another event that led to the war.

WebQuest are very time consuming to make, so proper planning is essential in order for it to be successful. I found that researching other teacher made WebQuest to be very helpful while completing this activity. Although a lot of work goes into developing a WebQuest, it is important for us as educators to know that when they are done with great effort and planning, the benefits that the students gain from them make it worth all the time!!

Lesson 5: Use of Online Communication Tools

When first trying to answer the question of whether or not I've used communication tools in my classroom I thought it was a no brainer. Of course I've used them! I email every single day in school. Then I started to realize that my idea of online communication tools were wrong. I realized that I never have used online communication tools with my students.  I email people every day and sometimes parents, but never to my students. The fact that I don't really correspond with students through email is why thats not a communication tool for my students. I've only really used it as a communication tool for my colleagues. To be honest a lot of these communication tools can be a little overwhelming at first, because I'm not sure if I always have the avaibalbe resources.  I would love to use discussion boards with my students, but I don’t know the first thing about how to get them started or if it even costs money.  When I was researching discussion boards in the classroom, I came across the Microsoft Office website that mentioned about downloading a version of a discussion board.  It looked really confusing to me and I’m sure it would be for my students.  Because of this class, I know that blogs are out and easy to use.  I like the site that we used for this class.  I would think that my students would enjoy creating their own format for their blogs.  I could definitely use blogs next year in my instruction.  I also think Wikis are cool, but once again they are a little confusing and I would need someone to show me how to create one.  So the reason I haven’t utilized all of these tools is due to the lack of resources as well as the lack of know-how.  Our school’s new webpage is supposed to provide teachers with these tools, so I’m excited about this summer’s technology professional development.
If I had to choose one online communication tool to use in my classroom, it would have to be blogs like the one here on blogger.com.  I know they are free and fairly easy to operate.  I think my students would enjoy them.  I would want to show my students blogs using a whole-group step-by-step approach.  Towards the beginning of the school year, I would have my students go to our class webpage to find the blog site.  From there, I would walk them through choosing a username, a url, background, font, font size, etc.  The urls would be similar so the students wouldn’t forget them.  I could even get the computer teacher/media specialist help me with the teaching the studetns this new resource. The first blog I would have them do would be an introduction about themselves; I've seen this done in some of our UC classes and I think it is a good starter. I would show them how to navigate to each other’s blogs with the right guidance, this could allow for some great peer review of assignments. I would want them to do this at the beginning of the year, so that they were proficient in it by the time we began using it on assignments.

Lesson 4: Using PowerPoint's in the classroom

This week’s topic for class is my favorite thus far! At my school I’m known very many different things: 1. Getting pied in the face 2. Always willing to do crazy stuff 3. Hands-on activities, and finally 4. Using PowerPoint slideshows in class. Watching the video and reading the different sources for information helped me grow as a PPT user. I love to use PPT’s in my classroom. Around 2 years ago I noticed how my students were beginning to feel about my Social Studies class. They seemed to be a little bored with the content and I knew they weren’t very excited about reading out of the textbook as much as we were. So I decided to make things more interesting by making PPT’s that coincided with all of my different topics/units. I began to use the PPT’s as the main source of teaching rather than the textbook. I even began making review games and fun activities that the students could participate in with Microsoft PowerPoint.

I have around 100 PowerPoint’s that I use in my class each year. The topics range from Causes of the Revolutionary War to Use of technology in the Civil War. One of the PowerPoint’s I created was meant to act as a fun game/review of what a primary source is.  In class on this day I made the students split up into teams so that I could test their comprehension on primary sources. This PPT was presented all 5 of my social studies classes. I teach 5^th grade SS in a departmentalized grade-level, so I teach the same lessons 5 times each day. I would have to say that I was probably most proud of making this topic of “primary sources” which can be kind of redundant and boring to students, one that they enjoyed. All of the classes really loved coming into SS and using PPT’s to play a review game.

Of course this PPT wasn’t completely perfect. One thing I could have made a little better was how the PowerPoint should have had a “home” functioned key that actually worked. I tried to put a “home” button in the slide but failed to sync it up correctly and it didn’t work. This caused a little dis-organization.

Overall I would have to say that the students enjoyed the presentation that I created for them. Every student was excited to come to class. I had to make them promise not to tell the answers to the questions for other classes! I would recommend the use of PowerPoint to every educator. Other than having to worry about your computer crashing and maybe some viruses, I don’t really see many bad things that can happen from using PPT. If we as educators take the time to create a valuable PPT’s, I know that students will respond to them in positive ways. 

Lesson 3: Using Publisher for School Newsletter

Technology has been a big part of my occupation over the last few years. Not only do I love to use technology within my classroom, but for the last couple of years I’ve also served as my school’s Webmaster. Through this process, I have become very familiar with all sorts of programs such as DTP and Word Processors. As webmaster, one of my responsibilities is to help design our school newsletter. This is an informational newsletter that goes home with students every Friday. The newsletter at the top of this post is used to communicate important dates, reminders, and information to parents/guardians. Parents have said they really enjoy these newsletters because a lot of times their child will forget to remind them about an important event that is coming up at school.

          When looking at the school newsletter you can tell that it is definitely visually appealing. It has been designed in columned boxes so that the information doesn’t run together. There are lots of bright colors and images that help each block of information stand apart from the other. Each block also has a big headline so that you can instantly see who or what the information pertains to. I always make sure that the date of the current newsletter is at the top right of the page so that it doesn’t get confused with previous newsletters.

          There were a few things that really distracted from my newsletter. On my original newsletter for this week I tried to cram about 9 different blocks of information on the page. While I was successful in doing so, I noticed that it really took away the clarity of the page itself. The font became too small to read because I tried to squeeze too much on. Another thing that I noticed from my original document was that I made a header about Literacy Night at a minor league baseball game here by my school, but I failed to give the date and time for the game. I gave information about what the event was being held for and how much tickets were but forgot the most important information! Our school’s Spring Carnival is a really big event in our community, so we’re always to quickly advertise it. As with any school event, volunteers are a must. On our newsletter I put a blurb in it talking about the carnival and letting our school community know that we were looking for volunteers. In the newsletter I told everyone to contact a big parent volunteer in our school, Luanne Kinman. When editing this newsletter I failed to take into account that not everyone knows Luanne!  In order to make this an organized final product, I had to go back to add her phone number onto the page. Now as you can tell from the final product located above, our newsletter is much clearer and easier for parents to use. 

Lesson 2 - Using Databases and Spreadsheets

Who knew that so much could be accomplished in our classrooms by using Spreadsheets and/or Databases? Not me, that’s for sure! Over the past week I learned more about spreadsheets and databases then I did in my entire undergrad computer classes. As an undergrad student I never focused on how these programs could be used to help me as an educator so I never really made that connection, but my eyes have been open to a lot of things in the past week just from this lesson!

When I first became an educator I really only used programs like Excel to keep attendance or to maybe chart who was on task with a project or something like that. In the last year or so I have moved from basic Excel use to using the spreadsheets to communicate assessment results with my 5^th grade students. I have made spreadsheets that calculate overall scores on assessments such as my summative tests and common assessments given by the school district. This has been extremely valuable, because I have made it a friendly competition between all 5 of my classes to see who could get the top score. We always chart our overall scores.

I thought that I was using spreadsheets and databases to the fullest, but boy was I wrong. When searching online I found lots of uses of spreadsheets in the classroom. In fact this website: http://www.amphi.com/~psteffen/excel.html has many resources that make Excel fun and meaningful to use in the classroom. I have displayed a picture of how you can create flashcards for studying on excel at the top of the blog. I found that webpage by using another teacher’s website here: http://www.sbaran.net/excel/index.html it was Mr. Baran’s website that really got me excited in new ways to use Excel. Over the last 3 years of my teaching experience, I have made my students make timelines on several occasions. Not once did it ever cross my mind to have them make timelines with interactive pictures on Excel until I read about Mr. Baran’s ideas. On his page and others I found examples of how students were placed in groups and given certain key events in a certain thematic unit like the Revolutionary War for example. The students worked hard to make their contribution to the class timeline.  Mr. Baran has ideas such as graphing the president’s political background with Excel as well as much more!

Over the past week my thoughts about spreadsheets and databases have changed tremendously. I hate to admit it, but I used to be like the teacher from the article we were supposed to read who said that if she didn’t get how to use Excel how could her students? Now that I have read more about how to use the program I can honestly say that my feelings have changed! I look forward to utilizing these new ideas!