Last blog for class/ Low-cost presentations powered by the cloud

This class has been very time consuming but I know I discovered new technology and will continue to keep playing. This class is better to look back at than to be involved in I really liked playing with the sites but did not enjoy typing reflections on the threads. I know it has caused me to be better at typing but still I find posting for class intimidating and a slow process, now blogging is another story. I do not know if I will continue on twitter but will keep up my Google reader so if anyone posts to their blog I will see it. I hope to spend staff development time this summer really exploring options with my smartboard I know I am just scratching the surface of what I can do. I also will continue to play with Skype ( Kristin I think many of us are new to this) especially when I bite the bullet and pay for Quest Bundling. It is hard to believe that we will be graduating in less than 3weeks.
This caught my eye and I just had to add it, I think clouding is going to really be an economical factor for education in the near future. Low-cost presentations powered by the cloud
Slidelive offers affordable presentation services for professors, especially for distance education
By Dennis Carter, Assistant Editor

SMARTBoards and Customizing the Notebook Toolbar

thought some of you new to smartboards might like this video hyper link thru the title

link to power point

playing with linkng powerpoint

tagging wordle for presentation

using this wordle in my presentation is made from words I use as tags in Delicious
4/26/09

journal writing 4/23/09

Added thoughts to thread 5 and 6 this morning, to school early to play with video casting on Skype. Last night Jeannie, Barb and I were able to have a conference call on SKYPE I have video but was not successful with that because of the dial up connection I tried to view Barb's video but even that was not good and usually disconnected us. The audio portion was fine a little hard to hear at times. It took some work to find Barb and Jeannie's address but now that I have them when they are on line I will know. I think Skype will be a communication tool I will use in the future especially with family and when I get off dial up and onto DSL. I am still planning on doing my presentation on tagging (and word clouds) even though I have learned and spent a lot of time exploring voice and video casting, which I plan to use on my smart board

smartboard info

Barb clicking on this title should get you to one site that has some smart board info I also think amy had a previous blog that gave some good smart board sites most of the ones I am using now are more advanced hope this helps diane

barb just found another article that links to a site I use you may like this
ttp://smartboards.typepad.com/smartboard/2009/04/smart-boards-and-the-bbcs-one-minute-wonders.html
I think you can copy and paste it to get to it

weekly reflection 4/22/09

I am actually kinda pumped right now, and will do this reflection for the last few days. If I do not do it now, I will be busy trying things and may forget to reflect most of what I am doing. First off I have two chapters left in Disrupting Class (which I will finish soon). I have finally found some answers for my senior high students who have low math grades and need my class to graduate. I dropped the written text very early this year and have been struggling with what curriculum to use. I used as a guide the MCA standards because now I have juniors with seniors and they must pass the 11th grade MCA's. This book gives me a sense that I have been heading in the right direction and if I continue to use technology may be able to find approaches and lessons that will spark that intrinsic motivation.
Related to this, is the need to organize what I am doing and hope to do. One thing I have been working on this week is researching tagging. As I showed in class Wednesday night my i Google is a useful tool for me and I will continue to use it well after class. I have unsubscribed many email posts and run them through my RSS feeder so I can scan and book mark in one place. I have read a few articles about tagging and right now it seems slower for the PC's than MAC but i am such a novice now that they have enough for me. I like the idea of not having to weed through all my files that have similar words instead using specific files that have uniques tags which link them together. Will try to explain this more in my class presentation, this is what I think I am going to do. I still keep playing with voice threading and interactive video. I was able this week to link my voice to lessons on the smart board and have spent about 2 hours today downloading Skype and hope to have it set up soon. This all said any one of these could turn out to be my final project. This class has been a great teacher that the more I learn, the more I know I need to keep everything organized, otherwise I go back to it and do not remember what I did or can not find the same site or directions.
I have to say I am hoping I do not go onto our Concordia site and find I have a whole different assignment I need to address.

math explodes

Audio Weekly Reflection using Voki

Twittering Good Friday service

"OMG! Twittering The Passion Of Christ
In a marriage of Christian tradition and digital technology, Wall Street's Trinity Church is using the micro-blogging service Twitter to perform the story of Jesus Christ".

now I knew I had to join twitter or be left in the dust.
(title will link you to the article)

clouding (article linked here)

I am very intrigued with clouding and the financial possibilities it could offer our limited education budgets. Attached is a 6 page article and I will continue to post references to other articles I run across.
to reference the article click on the title.

week 4 reflection

week 4 reflection: since Lisa taught me how to us stick notes I have been keeping a log and will now start new for next week
4-1 (5 hours) reader review & Concordia tech update a,b,c thread 3
4-3 (6:15-7:15 AM) checking Concordia and blog site
4-3 (9:10 -2pm) working on tab 4 and new thread
4-5 (6:30-1:30) responded Patrick posted to my blog (tech replace teachers?) added
quote to my blog title added post to Paul's forum question added a forum question
added a blog on sharing and a shared post ( this was an overload session but I was on
a roll)
4-7 (3:30-5) worked on voice for computer Voki site reviewed clouding article
bookmarked GOOD but very long will post link
4-8 added Voki to blog site
4-8 (3:30-6:00) worked with Chad and Lisa helped set up blue tooth mouse to be a mock
smart board helped Chad add smart notebook onto his computer.
4-8 (9- playing with updates and posting to other blogs

Flygirl Has A Voice

Preview my shared link

I tried something different on my blog site called shared. It is on the left corner of this page. It was not an educational article but one I thought those of you with little children and buying highchairs might be interested in. Now that I understand what I can do with this section I will post interesting finds there and will know what they mean if I find them on other sites

technology replaces the teacher ( click here for link to article)

Read a very interesting article and post on Education Week; 14.4 million dollars spent on testing the effectiveness of reading and math software programs has found few significant learning differences between students who used the technology and those taught using other methods. Attached link to the article click on title of this blog but in summary key points I found of interest are:

• that is a lot of money to spend on research
  
• one blog attached reflects that who makes the programs may have a significant affect (educators or businesses)
• study results which were designed to be unbiased showed even software makers consider who is teaching as critical. “These studies are intended to wash out all the variation in school environments, teacher quality, resources­—all the things that we, in fact, know make a difference when it comes to student learning,” said Margaret A. Honey, a technology expert who is the president of the New York Hall of Science.
• Only critical readers and thinkers can use these computer based programs independently

Cathy this made me think of you with your adults who want a teacher not a computer to learn from. The computer is a tool and we as educators become so important monitoring it is used appropriately while supplying constant guidance and feedback.
This makes me think about cooperative learning groups and how they do not function if you give them little to no, direction, guidance, intervention or feedback.

In reference to my title, since the data reported there was no significant learning change,which implies it is not better, does that mean that it is as good. If that is true could we see very large computer based courses needing less teachers?

Journal update

finished thread 4 stand a and b will continue with stand c on Sunday. I am sure the site will be full of post at that time, I am going to go back and post to thread 3 strand d by replying to other posts instead of posting a new one, it seems a little to late too do that. If anyone has a good podcast site I am interested in trying a very basic podcast I have a mic and can make a recorder work but do not know exactly where to store it so it has a url so I can embed it as a link

Need to connect to Twitter on Sunday and see if I can follow colleagues

Start research on what to do for project Sunday

accessible technology (reflection wk 3)

I have been so swamped with grades that I have not been able to play on any of my sites. I sure could tell I have not checked in daily, my reader had many stored articles and blogs to scan. I can tell from other blogs that I am going to have to find out more about twitter and try to follow some of you. I know we have discussed accessibility of technology is very important but so is upgraded technology. I am running into a problem with dial up at home (Cathy I know you have this issue too), it is way too slow for some of the podcasts and videos. I have also run into some problems with needing mp4 players for videos and even windows 2003 will not open some documents. We all seem to be having some issues whether it is Cathy or me with slow connections or Chad with not the right players to open information to Lisa having her computer in for repair. I know we are all getting around these issues right now but I feel we are just scratching the surface of issues we will face. Trying to keep up with technology to explore new areas is going to be a challenge in the very near future. The new i phones are outdated almost when they reach the market. Our computers can be updated but with too many bells and whistles older computers get bogged down.

I did use my book mark on i Google to open a power point and video I found in (one building) in the morning to another building later that afternoon, and I now have it stored there for future use. Right now in this class I feel one thing I am accomplishing is being able to organize all my options so I can reference them from anywhere.
On to trying a new adventure, podcasting. I borrowed a microphone and will try tomorrow after school with Lisa and Chad to see if we can set up a small podcast. will update this late

Patrick is this site okay to follow for you??

Patrick I added your knight flights blogspot from your classroom 2.0 site if this is wrong post to me otherwise I'm sure everyone will add you soon through this connection

A handful of Firefox tweaks that will double your browser speed

A handful of Firefox tweaks that will double your browser speed

Posted using ShareThis

If you are like me you can use all the help to speed up your browser, this also gave me chance to make a post to my blog using Share This

Recap of first three weeks

A recap of what I accomplished the first few weeks of this class:
Read and posted on the DaVinci Thread #2, Hendron Thread #1
Set up a site on blogger.com and attached all Concordia classmates as followers and people I
follow
continued the posted reading for class
posted pictures and videos to our Concordia web site and my blog site
added a face book account and joined classroom 2.0
my biggest accomplishment for me was to set up my igoogle page and link everything to one site
my reader (aggrigator) follows ASCD, Education W eek.., Edutopia, eschool nes, Teachers Love
Smart Boards and all the blog site I follow
on the front pape of my igoogle page I also have a book mark section which links me to concordia, intersting acticles that I have found. I also have a link to classroom 2.0 and delicious
My direction now is to use these sites more, especially the smart board info.
I found and listened to my first podcast today that I could have linked or posted to but I am trying to be a little more selective I still need to work on music on my blog site but think I am close

Keeping track of your efforts

This is posted on the Concordia blog site too. I was reading our syllabus and found that I was suppose to be keeping a weekly log via my blog page of how much time I have spent. A little (very) delinquent on this, as I have no log. : ( I am afraid of how many hours (way over 30) that I have spent especially when you consider it was read time too. I did find something of interest on my i Google reader; if you click on trends you will have some idea of blog activity and site visitations. I say some idea because if you are like me, it too many hours to really investigate, set up and link sites before this could register. I also do not think it is reading our involvement on our CSP network site.

Jeannie nice share of Kare 11 info on Medford's budget cuts. It actually showed up on my reader too.

link blog page to Concordia Cohort page

FYI Lisa and I played after school today and were able to add links to Classroom 2.0 and our Blog site to our i Google but could not add the Concordia site I was able to add a link on my blog page (not dashboard) .
If interested go to view blog (your own)- find customize in upper right corner- once opened click on add gadget- scroll to link list and open add title you want and URL is http://csptech.ning.com that's it, save and move it to where you want it on your blog page. My only dilemma now is how to keep my blog page open once I link, but at least it is very easy to get back to since it is i Goggle.

Fred came to the rescue all I need to do is hold sown the ctrl key when when I click on it and it will open a new tab

practicing video upload with tina

learning more about this goggle site

I had one of my students work with me on the goggle side of this. I had no idea there was an i goggle but it is now connected to this blog site and I was having fun customizing it. I am trying to figure out if I want the RSS feeds to go there or to my blogger side, still playing. Is everyone setting up a facebook site ??? I have the site but have not done a thing with it, seems to be too many place to keep checking and exploring

smart board quest

Since I now have this fantastic smart board I am trying to learn efficient ways to use it. I can already see that power-points are limiting and are not using the interactiveness of technology. Thought I would research this, hence the presentation blogs

My Top 10 slides on presentations

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

My Top 10 slides on presentations

View more presentations from Alexei Kapterev.

After leaving class on Wednesday night I decided to try something very different with my Senior math class that really struggles. We used the computer lab and I gave them the assignment to goggle arithmetic sequences and series, then copy and paste a two page lesson that they understood and could present to the class. They also had to have a real application, a link to their web site and and a problem to give to the class with an answer key. Of course this bright idea did not go off without a hitch. Limiting the lesson to two pages was the best thing I did I saw a lot of frustration because now they could not just copy!
We will see on Monday when some start to teach if a few are getting the idea. This will take time but the goal is to develop a small math book with their lessons and applications. The real task for me became guiding them to trim to just the condensed organized info they needed to have it make sense.
Most of the lessons this year have developed this way but I was doing all the work and sharing it with the students. Hopefully this will have them more involved and have more meaning. I think this fits with the Di Vinci article to some extent but can see that the students have access to learn through the goggle sites and info but I am positive they would not grasp the knowledge I hope they will acquire without guidance (the teaching part)
Learning is essential and everyone can and should learn, but I am not sure we can all teach or facilitate that learning. There is a difference between learning and helping someone become educated.