I learned that I had to organize my thoughts and be more concise. Otherwise, maintaining a blog could be a great deal of work. I often found myself taking notes on the readings and videos on word. Eventually, I would re-write what I had written (perhaps condense it) before posting.
I found what others had written to be very interesting. Most of the time we had a similar thought about what we had read or viewed or attempted; however, sometimes I was surprised by the difference of opinions. For instance, my classmate, Jeff, wrote that he found using Engrade (the on line grading system for teachers) difficult and didn’t seem to like it. I, on the other hand found it easy and I like many of the features that it had to offer. Sheldon loved Engrade. By the way, Sheldon has the best blogs. His titles are catchy and his blogs are well written. Michelle also liked using Engrade.
I know that my group, “On To The Future,” worked for hours on the newsletter to the parents. Therefore, I took it upon myself to look at and comment on the other groups’ newsletters as well. I looked at their slide show of screen shots, digital movies if I could. I wasn’t able to see Sheldon’s, so I let him know during a group meeting. Michelle, some how, posted sheldon’s digital movie to her blog and our group watched it from there.
I also like Michelle’s blog’s. They are often short and to the point. I love the way she attaches her slides, videos, and more to her blog pages. She viewed one of my digital stories on my blog and made a helpful comment. I especially liked to look at others blogs right after an assignment was due and I knew we had to post it to our blogs. I found the variety to be quite interesting. I love Jeff’s history video. I can definitely see him showing that to his class.
I do prefer to blog over twitter. I was a little frustrated with the fact that twitter only allows a person a certain amount of characters per twit. I like the fact that a blog can be as long or as short as you would like it to be. I like the fact that we can add links, photos, slide shows, videos, collages and more to our blog page to make it interesting. When I am through with this blog, I plan on creating a Christmas slide show on Smile Box and posting onto my blog. I hope I don’t have any problems. I have done it before. Sometimes I would have a problem getting it on and I would call Michelle and she would talk me through it again.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING EXCHANGE - BLOG EXPERIENCE
Even though our semester is over, I still plan on checking in on my classmates and especially my group members through their blogs and continue to comment to them either through e-mail or right on the blog. I think Sheldon had the catchiest titles. I think my titles were catchy. They may not have all been exciting. However, I definitely let the reader know what the blog was going to be about.
I found that I learned a little more about the class by reading the blogs of my classmates. If you think about it, we had at LEAST two blogs going on at the same time. Through the International Writing Exchange (IWE), I found out that one of my classmates was born in South America (I think it was Victoria). She posted a beautiful collage of family photos. I also communicated with Sheldon and Michelle through the International Writing Exchange. While a discussion was on-going about family (which I believe I had originated that topic), I got to see a beautiful family photo that belonged to Sheldon. I had posted a video clip from YouTube, which featured my father the summer before he passed away. Sheldon had commented on my movie, which I believe inspired, him to post his family photo. I sent a reply comment back to him. Each time someone made a comment on the IWE, it would show up in personal my e-mail log. For a while I was responding to everyone via e-mail until Dr. Smirnova explained to me that I had to click on a link towards the bottom of the e-mail to respond on the IWE site. I believe I also originated the topic of music and food as well. It was interesting to see how far those subjects were carried.
Well, it is finally time to wind things down. I do have a few more things to post, which I will do probably later today. So I will say, goodbye for now.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Wonders Of the Web (WOW) – Final Project for Teaching With Technology @ Mount Saint Mary College – Displayed What We Learned.
Before everyone goes their separate ways for the holiday, I wanted touch base with my classmates and let you know that I have enjoyed learning from all of you. I learned by listening to your comments and ideas from our class meetings, looking at your posted works or blogs, but most of all I found all your presentations on Monday to possess passion. Everyone was passionate about their subject matter, which made it quite enjoyable.
1. Sheldon - I apologize because I missed a lot of your presentation in trying to get onto WebEx. Luckily I was on the phone with Michelle and I heard what she was hearing. I was also lucky enough to view it while you were rehearsed it during our final group meeting. You did a fantastic job. I love the fact that you added photos of Spain and family members in your presentation. It allows the viewer the opportunity to imagine what he/she could do with the tools that you had chosen to present (i.e., Piknik). I would also like to add that I sincerely enjoyed working with you this semester on all our group projects. I learned a great deal from you. Be well and stay in touch please.
2. Jeff – I have seen the link for Jog the Web, but I never did explore the use of it. When I use firefox I can bookmark items. I like the concept of bookmarking sites. You are always very organized. I was a pleasure to learn from you classmate. Be well.
3. Tina – I sincerely enjoyed your presentation. I can tell that you put in a lot of time and effort. I was so upset when your power went out. You had me captivated. I agree with you. Many students need the visual to go along with what you are saying to them. Creating videos is something that I am very interested in doing both for educational purposes and for personal purposes as well. Creating family memories is very important to me. Therefore, I will go back and review your presentation again over the break because creating videos is something that I want to work on in the near future.
4. Kiarra – I love your enthusiasm for the subject matter that you teach. We saw it earlier in the semester when we all completed a project on “Constructivism.” I’m sure you are going to make a fantastic teacher. You are right, the student always love playing jeopardy. Good luck and be well.
5. Kristen – You did a great job even though you had a student at the house with you and you were rushing through your presentation. If I would have known that you were going to have a student come, I would have let you go before me. I am studying special education. Therefore, I am always looking out for helpful tools that I can use. I think I will play with PicLits over the break and perhaps create a lesson using this site. Thank you and be well.
6. Michelle – You did a fantastic job, as usual. I loved the way you used prezi for presenting you project. You had turned me onto Glogster during the course of the semester. You had already sold me on the idea of incorporating Gloster or Snapshot into the classroom via projects or even my own use. Thank you for being a fantastic group member and mentor. Be well and stay in touch.
1. Sheldon - I apologize because I missed a lot of your presentation in trying to get onto WebEx. Luckily I was on the phone with Michelle and I heard what she was hearing. I was also lucky enough to view it while you were rehearsed it during our final group meeting. You did a fantastic job. I love the fact that you added photos of Spain and family members in your presentation. It allows the viewer the opportunity to imagine what he/she could do with the tools that you had chosen to present (i.e., Piknik). I would also like to add that I sincerely enjoyed working with you this semester on all our group projects. I learned a great deal from you. Be well and stay in touch please.
2. Jeff – I have seen the link for Jog the Web, but I never did explore the use of it. When I use firefox I can bookmark items. I like the concept of bookmarking sites. You are always very organized. I was a pleasure to learn from you classmate. Be well.
3. Tina – I sincerely enjoyed your presentation. I can tell that you put in a lot of time and effort. I was so upset when your power went out. You had me captivated. I agree with you. Many students need the visual to go along with what you are saying to them. Creating videos is something that I am very interested in doing both for educational purposes and for personal purposes as well. Creating family memories is very important to me. Therefore, I will go back and review your presentation again over the break because creating videos is something that I want to work on in the near future.
4. Kiarra – I love your enthusiasm for the subject matter that you teach. We saw it earlier in the semester when we all completed a project on “Constructivism.” I’m sure you are going to make a fantastic teacher. You are right, the student always love playing jeopardy. Good luck and be well.
5. Kristen – You did a great job even though you had a student at the house with you and you were rushing through your presentation. If I would have known that you were going to have a student come, I would have let you go before me. I am studying special education. Therefore, I am always looking out for helpful tools that I can use. I think I will play with PicLits over the break and perhaps create a lesson using this site. Thank you and be well.
6. Michelle – You did a fantastic job, as usual. I loved the way you used prezi for presenting you project. You had turned me onto Glogster during the course of the semester. You had already sold me on the idea of incorporating Gloster or Snapshot into the classroom via projects or even my own use. Thank you for being a fantastic group member and mentor. Be well and stay in touch.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Reflection on Mount Saint Mary's Teaching with Tecnology course
I sincerely enjoyed taking teaching with technology. It was a great deal of work. It was quite frustrating at times. It was also very time consuming. However, I learned so much. Collaborating and collaboration took on a whole new meaning through taking this course. I learned that I could do so many of the things that I only dreamed of doing. I often was afraid to try new things on the various websites in fear of getting a computer virus or someone stealing my personal information. I took a leap of faith. Because I trusted Dr. Smirnova, I knew that she would not suggest a site that had been known for viruses. Below I have touched upon a few key aspects of the class.
• Group Assignments: I loved the group assignments most of all. I liked that fact that we had to all do our own assignments and do a related assignment with our group. I found it helpful to have group meetings every other week from class meetings. First, we always found a time that worked for all of us, and it usually was not on a Monday evening. Friday evenings seemed to be a popular time to meet because we all didn’t have the pressure of having to be at work by 7 A.M. the next morning. Second, we often discussed our individual projects, which added to our learning experience. We would often share the product of our individual assignments during our group meetings and receive instant feedback from our group members. We would also discuss how we were going to each tackle the up coming individual projects as well. I feel that I learned a great deal from my group members.
•Digital Stories: I loved learning how to make educational movies.
o Math: I plan on creating math movies. You know the math teachers often feel that they would like to pop in a movie that relates to their topic like the science, social studies, and English teachers can. However, you really cannot find many movies pertaining to math that are educational and entertaining (just clips from movies). Therefore, it is my mission to create at least a few math movies that I can show to my future classes. I believe that I could not create a math movie that would hold the student’s attention for the entire class period. However, a fifteen minute movie with possibly a SMART Board activity to follow is something that I will attempt.
o Religious Education: During the course of the semester, I created a movie (digital story project) that I plan on showing to my religious education students. I created a story about Abraham (Old Testament – “Father Abraham”) and I plan on creating more Biblical stories as teaching tools. There are many visual learners. Therefore, creating visuals to go along with what you are verbalizing is a plus, especially for my first grade religious education class.
• Creativity: As a former Day Cay operator, I love creating. The children that came to my home always left with some type of creation for the day. Creativity is something that I want to incorporate into my classroom as well. Among the sites and tools that I have learned about this semester, I loved working with Gloster, Smile Box, Microsoft Windows Movie Maker, Slide Share, Webspiration, Google Documents and Voice Thread to name a few. I loved the creative aspects of those sites and tools. Furthermore, the reason why I mentioned the sites and tools that I did was because I found them easy to use. If I found them easy, most anyone would too. The best part is that I didn’t have to spend money. Twitter is a little frustrating because you are only allowed so many characters per post.
• Collaboration: Among all the tools and sites that were used, I found the collaborative tools and sites to be of most interest. I plan on incorporating many of the collaborative tools in my classroom. I have found that I had learned a deal through collaborating with my group members. We had collaborated through several mediums. Google Chat, Google Documents, G-mail (Google e-mail system), PBwiki, Webspiration, WebIQ, WebEx, and Voice Thread were among the most popular and my favorite collaborative sites and tools. When working on various group projects, we communicated via g-mails, g-chat, posting work to the Google documents and to the PB Wiki. We were all contributing to the assignment and Google Documents and PB Wiki were the places where we could view the work in progress, and where g-chat and g-mail were the mediums where we communicated our thoughts and suggestions in between meeting on WebIQ. While on WebIQ, we could upload something that we wanted to share or work on collaboratively. The facilitator of the meeting could allow the other members of the meeting access to the pen. There were times when we when we were all writing and working at the same time on that site. We sometimes had a problem with wanting to work on the same page, but a different area. The entire page would move before you. When that happened, we moved to Google Documents, where we could all work simultaneously and still hear each other and communicate on WebIQ.
• Communication: Of course there are blogs and twitter. Blogs are great for posting interesting information that you know or learned and want to share. I like the fact that you can post a picture, slide show, collage, or even a movie to your blog page. I plan on continuing to post work, pictures, and movies to my blog site well after this semester is over. Twitter was okay. I didn’t like the fact that you were only allowed a set amount of characters at a time. However, that is a feature that I’m sure others love about the site.
• Personal Growth: I am very excited by the fact that during the course of this semester, I actually created three websites. My PB Wiki is the site where I posted the majority of my work. I posted my interests, assignments, and personal facts about myself. I was careful to always create a link back to my PB Wiki home page. I also continued to work on the teacher tool kit long after the assignment was completed by my group. Each time that I found an interesting, helpful, or resourceful site, I posted it to the appropriate section of my group’s tool kit. Aside from the PB Wiki site, we were asked to create another website of our own. I found this site to be complicated to use. Through the attending some of the on-line meetings, I heard about Weebly. I decided to try it. I found it easy to use. This site is still a work in progress for me. In my studies for this course, I got a lot of great ideas from others. I plan on transforming my Weebly site into a great educational site that others will come to. This site, however, is still in its infancy state. In the future I will create a website for my students, where I will post assignments, class presentation, and podcasts. I have learned so much, and I plan on continuing to grow and learn.
•
• Group Assignments: I loved the group assignments most of all. I liked that fact that we had to all do our own assignments and do a related assignment with our group. I found it helpful to have group meetings every other week from class meetings. First, we always found a time that worked for all of us, and it usually was not on a Monday evening. Friday evenings seemed to be a popular time to meet because we all didn’t have the pressure of having to be at work by 7 A.M. the next morning. Second, we often discussed our individual projects, which added to our learning experience. We would often share the product of our individual assignments during our group meetings and receive instant feedback from our group members. We would also discuss how we were going to each tackle the up coming individual projects as well. I feel that I learned a great deal from my group members.
•Digital Stories: I loved learning how to make educational movies.
o Math: I plan on creating math movies. You know the math teachers often feel that they would like to pop in a movie that relates to their topic like the science, social studies, and English teachers can. However, you really cannot find many movies pertaining to math that are educational and entertaining (just clips from movies). Therefore, it is my mission to create at least a few math movies that I can show to my future classes. I believe that I could not create a math movie that would hold the student’s attention for the entire class period. However, a fifteen minute movie with possibly a SMART Board activity to follow is something that I will attempt.
o Religious Education: During the course of the semester, I created a movie (digital story project) that I plan on showing to my religious education students. I created a story about Abraham (Old Testament – “Father Abraham”) and I plan on creating more Biblical stories as teaching tools. There are many visual learners. Therefore, creating visuals to go along with what you are verbalizing is a plus, especially for my first grade religious education class.
• Creativity: As a former Day Cay operator, I love creating. The children that came to my home always left with some type of creation for the day. Creativity is something that I want to incorporate into my classroom as well. Among the sites and tools that I have learned about this semester, I loved working with Gloster, Smile Box, Microsoft Windows Movie Maker, Slide Share, Webspiration, Google Documents and Voice Thread to name a few. I loved the creative aspects of those sites and tools. Furthermore, the reason why I mentioned the sites and tools that I did was because I found them easy to use. If I found them easy, most anyone would too. The best part is that I didn’t have to spend money. Twitter is a little frustrating because you are only allowed so many characters per post.
• Collaboration: Among all the tools and sites that were used, I found the collaborative tools and sites to be of most interest. I plan on incorporating many of the collaborative tools in my classroom. I have found that I had learned a deal through collaborating with my group members. We had collaborated through several mediums. Google Chat, Google Documents, G-mail (Google e-mail system), PBwiki, Webspiration, WebIQ, WebEx, and Voice Thread were among the most popular and my favorite collaborative sites and tools. When working on various group projects, we communicated via g-mails, g-chat, posting work to the Google documents and to the PB Wiki. We were all contributing to the assignment and Google Documents and PB Wiki were the places where we could view the work in progress, and where g-chat and g-mail were the mediums where we communicated our thoughts and suggestions in between meeting on WebIQ. While on WebIQ, we could upload something that we wanted to share or work on collaboratively. The facilitator of the meeting could allow the other members of the meeting access to the pen. There were times when we when we were all writing and working at the same time on that site. We sometimes had a problem with wanting to work on the same page, but a different area. The entire page would move before you. When that happened, we moved to Google Documents, where we could all work simultaneously and still hear each other and communicate on WebIQ.
• Communication: Of course there are blogs and twitter. Blogs are great for posting interesting information that you know or learned and want to share. I like the fact that you can post a picture, slide show, collage, or even a movie to your blog page. I plan on continuing to post work, pictures, and movies to my blog site well after this semester is over. Twitter was okay. I didn’t like the fact that you were only allowed a set amount of characters at a time. However, that is a feature that I’m sure others love about the site.
• Personal Growth: I am very excited by the fact that during the course of this semester, I actually created three websites. My PB Wiki is the site where I posted the majority of my work. I posted my interests, assignments, and personal facts about myself. I was careful to always create a link back to my PB Wiki home page. I also continued to work on the teacher tool kit long after the assignment was completed by my group. Each time that I found an interesting, helpful, or resourceful site, I posted it to the appropriate section of my group’s tool kit. Aside from the PB Wiki site, we were asked to create another website of our own. I found this site to be complicated to use. Through the attending some of the on-line meetings, I heard about Weebly. I decided to try it. I found it easy to use. This site is still a work in progress for me. In my studies for this course, I got a lot of great ideas from others. I plan on transforming my Weebly site into a great educational site that others will come to. This site, however, is still in its infancy state. In the future I will create a website for my students, where I will post assignments, class presentation, and podcasts. I have learned so much, and I plan on continuing to grow and learn.
•
Friday, December 10, 2010
Middletown High School NJROTC: VETERANS' DAY TRIP TO NEW YORK CITY
Middletown High School NJROTC: VETERANS' DAY TRIP TO NEW YORK CITY: "Over 75 Middletown Cadets [this would be where our unit name would go if we had one!] were on the road to New York City for the 91st annual ..."
Veterans Day Parade photos from NBC News channel 4 can be found on the website provided below. At home, viewing parade on TV, we were able to see many faces like Jessica Glickman, Samantha M., Edith were among many of the familiar faces.
Web Link:
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local-beat/PHOTOS-NYC-Veterans-Day-2010-107296233.html
Veterans Day Parade photos from NBC News channel 4 can be found on the website provided below. At home, viewing parade on TV, we were able to see many faces like Jessica Glickman, Samantha M., Edith were among many of the familiar faces.
Web Link:
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local-beat/PHOTOS-NYC-Veterans-Day-2010-107296233.html
Middletown High School NJROTC: VETERANS' DAY TRIP TO NEW YORK CITY
Middletown High School NJROTC: VETERANS' DAY TRIP TO NEW YORK CITY: "Over 75 Middletown Cadets [this would be where our unit name would go if we had one!] were on the road to New York City for the 91st annual ..."
You can find photos from NBC News on line of the Middletown, New York NJROTC marching in the 2010 Veterans Day parade at the following site:
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local-beat/PHOTOS-NYC-Veterans-Day-2010-107296233.html
You can find photos from NBC News on line of the Middletown, New York NJROTC marching in the 2010 Veterans Day parade at the following site:
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local-beat/PHOTOS-NYC-Veterans-Day-2010-107296233.html
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Mind Mapping
Below, please find a mind-map of the properties of real numbers. These are properties that the students gradually learn. They begin learning these properties in about first grade and they are still being reviewed throughout high school. I decided to create my mind-map on webspiration. I like webspiration because it is a collaborative sight, colorful, easy to use and you can upload your own images.
If I had to create the next mind-map, it would probably be almost the same, only I would add the next layer, which would be the inverse of the additive property and so on.
I realize that when the image appears on the blog site it will be difficult to see. Therefore, please also find the link to this mind map just right above the image.
http://www.mywebspiration.com/view/658477a2a02
Friday, November 19, 2010
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