Instructional Video – Planets

My classmates, Robert Browning, Amy Blatchley and I created a short video highlighting some of the facts about our solar system.  The video was meant to cover topics for 7th grade standards in Earth Science.

The following includes our group’s Pitch and our Storyboard.  CLICK HERE

Click on the image below to watch the video.

After watching our out-of-this-world video, test your knowledge of the planets by taking our Google Forms Quiz HERE or copy and paste this link into your browser: http://tinyurl.com/kbocjgp

The ISTE standards this assignment helped me achieve are…

 

 

 

Webquests: The Indiana Jones of Teaching Tools – a Reflection

Indiana Jones had it all: romance, adventure, travel to exotic places and a quest! Within the first few minutes of the movie the viewer is along on the quest, searching for clues, gathering evidence, forming opinions and eventually, enjoying a satisfying and exciting ending that ties all pieces of the movie together.  

 

Webquests, when thoughtfully designed by a teacher, can have the same effect for their students. The internet questing tool can lead students on a fact journey, ultimately ending in a learning discovery.  

 

Over 12 years ago, I remember learning about Webquests and loving the format.  The teacher creates a guided lesson on the internet, using menu buttons and links throughout the internet as well as examples and assessments to encourage their students to explore.  When opening a webquest a couple of weeks ago and discovering the exact same format, menu buttons included, I was underwhelmed. My immediate reaction was disappointment.  I thought for sure the format would have been updated.  Surely, there would be graphics and moving parts and beautiful layouts.  There were not. Required to explore the Webquests, I was surprised at how thorough and thoughtful they were, despite being aesthetically bland.  I decided to put my prejudices aside and welcome the journey.

 

The format makes sense. Maybe there is a better way to send someone on an internet journey, but Webquests, in their easy, methodical way, are very practical. I followed the directions, clicked on the links to explore, explored, and made conclusions.  I learned!
When given the opportunity to design my own Webquest with 2 partners, I was underwhelmed with the format, but excited about our topic.  We chose to combine  Art and Science to focus on oil painting safety.  The Webquest would be made for middle school aged children for use at the beginning of an oil painting unit.  

https://sites.google.com/a/cougars.csusm.edu/the-chemistry-of-oil-painting/

Webquest: Oil Painting Safety

This week our group, Tamara Moody, Michael Zepeda and I explored using a Webquest to introduce a topic to our students and allow them to explore and engage with the material.

Inititally I was skeptical of WebQuests because they look outdated and can seem dry.  As a teacher, however, I loved creating the WebQuest for my students.  We were able to direct our students to the exact information we wanted them to learn and then be precise about what we wanted them to show us at the end of their journey.

Please click the painter Bob Ross, below, to explore our WebQuest about

Oil Painting Safety for 8th grade students:

Digital Citizenship

https://sdk.canva.com/v1/embed.js9

Elements of Digital Citizenship by Roon Disraeli Brown

The Connected Educator

Source: http://twitter100.com/

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This week in our Technology in the Classroom course, we explored twitter chats as a way to create, expand and use our Personal Learning Networks (PLNs).

I had never participated in a twitter chat before.  Using a hashtag (#) in front of our classroom’s unique twitter chat handle allowed us to communicate in our own space.  I felt it was kind of clunky and awkward. It was a bit frantic at times, with everyone chiming in at once, and then it was difficult, when we would respond to someone’s comment, to know if they even saw it.

I can see the benefit of using a twitter chat, however, in real time, in the classroom with the students directly in front of the educator, with all of the responses being projected onto a screen in the front of the room. This would be a great way to start the day as well as a quick assessment tool.

As for using twitter as a lifelong learner, I’m most excited about connecting with other artists and art educators on my feed.  I’d like to fill my feed with a daily does of inspiration and motivation.  Although I felt the twitter chat was not a sexy, smooth experience, I can definitely see the value in using it to connect with other educators across the globe.  I’m interested in connecting, especially, with those people in art hotspots.

We also spent some time perusing each other’s education blogs.  Most of these blogs are still at their infancy so there’s not too much to check out, but I can definitely see the value in finding and following robust education blogs, as well as blogs of new teachers.  Following along with a motivated and fresh new educator could be inspiring and help us new teachers feel like we are not alone.

Commenting on other’s blogs is certainly a quick way to expand our PLNs.  Sharing feelings and fears, information and links about the teaching professions, the classroom and technology helps all of us stay connected outside our four walls.  It could bring the outside in and I could definitely see it helping to shape daily lesson planning as well as long term continuous learning.

These are the blogs I checked out and left comments for as well as the link I shared with them:

Edwin Gonzales

—-Kahoot in the Classroom

https://getkahoot.com/how-it-works

Brad Doyle

—-Here’s an article suggesting 3 tech tools for evaluation:

https://www.edutopia.org/blog/classroom-tools-measure-student-learning-bethany-petty

Garren Amora Piccolo

—-Here’s an article with 5 ways to motivate students using technology:

https://blog.tophat.com/how-to-motivate-students/?utm_source=TrendMD&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Top_Hat_Blog_TrendMD_0

Mary Handy

—-I found a great website for digital citizenship that includes interactive games and lesson plans.

https://www.commonsensemedia.org/educators/digital-citizenship

 

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Here are some screen shots of a few of the people from our course whom I’m following:

 

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The ISTE standards are now locked in my mind.  I can see the value in having them so succinctly stated and easily available for review to make sure we are truly utilizing tech in the classroom in effective and modern ways.

The ISTE standard that was most significantly addressed in our most recent assignment was Standard 5: Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership. (Please refer to my blog on the ISTE-T Standards HERE.) Using twitter and blogs to connect with our fellow educators was useful and efficient.  As a teacher, utilizing technology to learn with and from educators certainly will contribute to our growth as professionals.

Owning and running an educational blog is a form of leadership.  It allows us to share information with and educate our fellow teachers.

Twitter also is an open door to continuing professional growth.  As an educator, I could start my own twitter chat, if I felt I had something to share, showing leadership and connection with other members of our profession.

I will continue to update my blog along this journey and I’m definitely going to tweet my way around the educational art world.  I’m excited to start!

Have you ever participated in a twitter chat?  Do you have a favorite?  If not, which twitter chat topic would you lead if were in charge of a chat? Leave a comment below!

How to build Personal Learning Networks – PLNs – using Twitter Chats

photo credit: yoursecurityadvisor.com

This week in class we are exploring building our own Personal Learning Networks, or PLNs.

What is a PLN?

The blog, Sh!ftLearning.com uses Jane Hart’s definition:

“A network of trusted connections with whom an individual interacts (and learns from) on a regular basis.”

Photo Credit: Education 422 CSUSM – Falcone – Canvas board

 

One of the ways to expand one’s PLN is to utilize Twitter.  Not only for checking out other people’s ideas, but also by having real-time chats about interests in common using twitter chats.

As defined by Buffer Social:

“A Twitter chat is where a group of Twitter users meet at a pre-determined time to discuss a certain topic, using a designated hashtag (#) for each tweet contributed. A host or moderator will pose questions (designated with Q1, Q2…) to prompt responses from participants (using A1, A2…) and encourage interaction among the group. Chats typically last an hour.”

HERE is a step by step article for joining your first twitter chat and what to expect.

Major educational live chats on Twitter

Live chats		Description
#edchat		#edchat is for teachers, students, parents, and administrators to discuss educational topics on Twitter.
#ntchat		#ntchat is to provide support for new teachers and connect them via social media.
#lrnchat		#lrnchat is for people who are interested in the topics of social media and learning to communicate and help other people learn.
#ptchat		#ptchat is for parents and teachers to communicate.
#spnchat		#spnchat was started by Dr. Gregory McGough on Sep. 18, 2010 to discuss education reform. It is a chatting group that focuses on State Policy Network in education.
#urbaned		#urbaned is for people who care about urban education to connect and communicate.
#SmallBizChat		#SmallBizChat is a weekly conversation to help small business owners to succeed.

Chart from: Luo, T., Sickel, J. & Cheng, L. TechTrends (2016).

 

 

Top 200 Tech Tools

This week in our Educ 422 class, we focused on creating a group presentation about some tech tools that may be useful for our classrooms.

After a short activity in which our class explored our different collaboration styles, we split up into our groups.

This short introduction to the way we work in a group was very helpful for all of us.  We were suddenly quite aware of our strengths and weaknesses as a group partner.  We were also able to be aware of and appreciate our group-mates’ strengths and weaknesses.  This relieved much of the tension that can naturally occur when six students are trying to attain the same goal from different viewpoints.

We were given a specific list of tech tools to choose from. (Find that list HERE.) I chose to explore a tool called Flipbuilder. I’m always attracted to publishing platforms.  Kids, and I, can create our own magazine style or picture-book style books online.  What makes this publishing platform unique is that the pages can become interactive.  Using PDFs, photos and video, the user can embed interactive objects into the books they create.  Also unique, the program will actually read aloud the words written on the pages.  This is such an exciting thing for elementary students who create their own books.  They can encourage their peers to “read” their books even if their friend’s ability level is not the same.

The group work process was interesting.  We got the majority of our technical and organizational issues ironed out before leaving the classroom on the night we were given the assignment. Google products make collaboration easy in that one can see changes being made in real time.  All of us had access to our project.  We all added our material and then I designed and formatted our slide presentation.  Our classmate, Hailey, formatted our Assessment using Google Forms.  We all went into each document and tweaked them.  This was a very satisfying way to work remotely as a group!

Please click on the slideshow below to view our team’s Google Slides presentation in outline form.  We reviewed 6 tech tools with an eye towards how they would be used in the classroom.

Here is our Google Slide Presentation

Following the presentation we submitted a Google Form for our classmates to evaluate their understanding and assimilation of the information of the products presented.

Please participate in our Google Form here

The collaborators for this project are:

Daniela Cortez

Brad Doyle

Hailey Leighton

Tamara Moody

Liliana Rivas

ISTE

Rate myself –  As I haven’t had my own classroom yet, my self ratings are fairly baseless, but here are my own ratings for the ISTE standards for teachers:

1. Technology Operations and Concepts— Candidates demonstrate a sound understanding of technology operations and concepts  9
2. Planning and Designing Learning Environments and Experiences —Candidates plan and design effective learning environments and experiences supported by technology. 5
   
3. Teaching, Learning and the Curriculum — Candidates implement curriculum plans,  that include methods and strategies for applying technology to maximize student learning. 4
   
4. Assessment and Evaluation — Candidates apply technology to facilitate a variety of effective assessment and evaluation strategies. 4
   
5. Productivity and Professional Practice — Candidates use technology to enhance their productivity and professional practice.  4
   
6. Social, Ethical, Legal and Human Issues —Candidates understand the social, ethical, legal, and human issues surrounding the use of technology in PK-12 schools and apply those principles in practice. 7
   

 

Q:  Reader! How would you present these standards to your fellow teachers?  How often should we revisit them at our schools? Leave your insights in the comments below.

*Image of children at header: Children at school | by Lupuca | LINK

Infographic made using Canva | LINK