Lesson 8: The Security Finale

For this last week in educational technology we studied the importance of security on the internet.  We place such a grand emphasis on using technology on a daily basis we have to account for the dangers that threaten our hardware.  As an educator so much of what we do is completed upon technology and I have been sweating bullets a few times when I couldn’t find my flash drive, which contained all my lesson plans and resources.  Professionally we have a responsibility to teach our students proper security measures and ethical treatment of technology.  In our ISTE standards for teachers we are to model and promote digital citizenship and responsibility.  Whenever we have students using technology we need to be teaching them the importance of maintaining security of their usernames and passwords.  We teach them to look for good and reliable sources and avoid simply opening emails and such. 

In the classroom I notice how our servers have several anti-virus programs in place that block students from going to unreliable sources that could potentially transfer malicious software.  Email is limited to using outlook because of their greater control with the school system.  Students are encouraged to connect to the wifi network within the school, but they also know they will be monitored in their usage of the net and they can’t go to several websites they could otherwise go to on their own.  I think it’s very important to teach internet security to the students because they generally don’t have much of a concern about it.  I have had to tell students about keeping their usernames and passwords safe and only used by them a lot recently.  If another students forgets theirs then another is quick  to say, “They can use mine.”  That is admirable that they want to help their fellow peers, but this behavior keeps students at risk because they don’t worry about losing their identity or what others can do with their identity.  Students really don’t think about someone else acting as them and going to inappropriate sites and then the real student get in trouble for it.  I try to explain to them that even though it doesn’t seem to matter now, they still need to help their personal data to themselves.  I don’t give students my username and password and they ask why so I tell them that anything could happen if I know that only I know my username and password.  I can’t allow myself to not have control over my username. 

This transfers to my own personal accounts.  I try to maintain security as best as I can by using a password that has capital and lowercase letters as well as numbers within the password.  I have dealt with viruses in the past and I always check to make sure emails are from people that I know or I understand the subject title.  I don’t add people to my facebook unless I know them personally and I don’t go to lots of links on facebook as well.  I know that I do need to get a more updated anti-virus program, but until I do so I try to search the web as conservatively as possible. 

Lesson 7: The Brain & Web 2.0 Tools

This week we learned about the importance of the brain in learning for students.  We focus so much about practices and strategies that will help students understand a topic, but we can also gain a lot more insight on the learning process by looking at the functions of the organ that does the processing itself.  We looked at the correlation between art forms and the growth of knowledge in other content areas.  I think practices that involve us using multiple parts of the brain are more effective to build learning in students.  When you become accustomed to using many parts of your brain you will be adept and using it in other areas as well.  When you use more of your brain you are more likely to commit learning to memory. 

Another important practice that can help learning is the use of games in learning.  This has to be very purposeful because games can quickly become about the winning or losing aspect and learning doesn’t matter as much.  If you maintain that balance you can present interesting and informative games that students will be engaged in and learn through their engagement. 

We were asked to choose one of the web 2.0 tools that we have learned about in our tech explorations and apply that into the classroom and evaluate its use and effectiveness in the class.  I chose to use webquests in my classroom and made a webquest specifically for my content area that I could use in the first few weeks of school.  Webquests are great tools in that you have everything available already on the internet so students can complete the activity just as efficiently at home as at school.  Webquests also bring out more engagement and interest from the students.  This does not mean you can have any normal workbook page as a webquest.  There has to be real world applications into your webquest or its not being used in a purposeful manner. 

I completed my webquest with my students this week and it took a couple days to complete but I really enjoyed the products that were created as a result of the webquest.  The students created more in-depth maps of the school and incorporated elements just as a professional cartographer would.  The objective was to learn about elements of maps for students to make better connections and understand what maps are trying to convey to them.  This is the same webquest I posted in lesson six from QuestGarden. 

The students were indeed very engaged and had creative products in the end.  They showed an increase in knowledge about geographic elements within maps.  I wish that I would have provided more in-depth activities on the different elements however.  All I had was for students to provide basic understanding of the element such as latitude and longitude and then had them incorporate that into their school maps.  I would have liked to have extended this by having students apply understanding of the elements in another form other than the visual maps.  I enjoyed completing this activity with my students as it made the class more interesting and built comradery with my students. 

Lesson 6: Webquests!

Here's a link to my webquest:  http://questgarden.com/147/11/7/120804060110/

During this week I was asked to create my own webquest that I could legitimately see using in my classroom this year.  I actually have experience with webquests already and so I already had preconceived notions about how they are used.  When I completed undergraduate work, one of the things we had to do was create our own webquest.  This was done using Microsoft Word and creating templates that we used over and over again.  We would hyperlink to each additional page and save our pages as html files in order to use them as a web application.  If anything I have said seems difficult you will understand when I first thought about this task I kind of rolled my eyes a bit.  It’s not that the task of thinking up a webquest is too difficult, but the process of making one is rather long. 

If felt much better after reading on in the directions and understanding that we were going to use an online application in Quest Garden.  From the Lesson Six reading I found some interesting information about webquests that I never paid much attention to.  I thought that when you use technology in such a way it would always be good not matter how you were assessing.  Our reading states that webquests are designed to imitate higher order thinking activities that adults would do in the workplace or at the very least a real task they would perform.  This idea along with my new views on creating more cognitive thinking activities I see that webquests, when used properly are great ways to influence learning in the students.  When they are not used properly they are those fun activities that we do, but don’t get much out of.  Even fun things with little to no purpose will lose engagement from students.

So the actual process I took when completing the webquest came about fairly quickly because I already had an idea on a webquest I would like to do.  I got an idea from a fellow teacher this past week while cleaning up my room and she had previously taught 6^th grade social studies the year before.  She said she completed this activity on the elements of maps using the school map and having the students make it into a more professional looking map.  She said the administration really enjoyed the activity and so I was already keen on using the activity.  I decided to turn this into a webquest and make the students look for the information necessary to complete the activity on their own instead of me presenting all the information to them.  When they find the information on their own it will better placed to memory. 

When using the Quest Garden application I found it to be a blessing and a curse at the same time.  I enjoyed having a layout for how to put everything together and having everything already online instead of making my own links and html formats.  The main problem I had was the lack of choice when choosing a color.  I think color is a big thing for students because it’s something that catches their eye and draws them in.  Sight is the major sense in humans and to have better coloring would have been nice.  I also found it extremely frustrating when I thought I saved my work and when I would go to another section and come back to my tasks to reference back to and see nothing there.  That was a bit your lip moment to keep from lashing out irrationally.  However, I soon would click the save button three times before moving on and that seemed to make everything stay where it was supposed to be.  Overall I really enjoyed working on the webquest and it wasn’t difficult at all to complete the tasks.  I would like more choice in the editing of the webquest, but for streamlining the process I guess I won’t complain too much. 

Lesson 5: Visual Literacy

Visual literacy is a very powerful ability students develop over time and many already are proficient in that can enhance student learning of content knowledge.  Nearly all humans can see and that sense is the most dominant of all the senses.  This week I learned that visual literacy is something that all students should be utilizing in their learning because they take the images and process them in their mind to understand the meaning of it.  We watched a video from Martin Scorsese and he discussed about the lack of finances a middle class family had to go to formal entertainment such as theatre, but he was a regular at the movies and he looked deeper than what was just on the screen.  He looked into what made the scene and how it dictates what the audience feels.  We want our students to do similar things by taking the image of content and process the why and how it can be used in everyday life. 

We went this week into tech explorations and one of them was over math definitions.  I found it so interesting how they took so many vocabulary terms and provided visual and interactive elements to better explain the term than any words could do.  One thing I learned that I never really understood was how to use an abacus.  I know, teaching math you would think that I would understand and I probably could have if I took the time to look into it more, but I never did.  However, when looking up the vocabulary term of an abacus there was a mini activity where you use an abacus to show numerical form.  It’s not the most advanced tool now, but it’s such an important tool that earlier civilizations used to keep up with numbers on a grander level and I’m sure helped build civilization. 

I think after viewing the things found within this week’s lesson I can provide more rounded instruction for my students.  I would use imagery occasionally within my lessons, but it wasn’t a regular part of my instruction.  I see more now that visual literacy is a key component of learning and without it you are making the students think in such broad terms that you will undoubtedly get confusion and misdirection without visual stimuli that students pick up on and process quickly.   I’m going to use a lot of imagery to compare cultures from around the world to that of our own culture.  I’ll promote student self-worth by revealing the altered images of magazine ads and how propaganda can cause individuals to do things they would never normally think to do.  A picture is truly worth a thousand words because in that image you get more than the language of the situation.  You can see the setting, the emotion, the sensations the image provides and really understand what was going on and what people were feeling during the taking of those images. 

Lesson Four: Memorable PowerPoints

This past year as a 7^th grade math teacher I had to work with the new Common Core Standards.  A part of those standards Is a compacted curriculum for 7^th grade students that wish to take algebra 1 in 8^th grade and count it towards high school credit.  As such I taught an exploratory class with my pre-algebra students for a 9 week period over geometry.   

   One particular PowerPoint that I and another teacher from the other team worked on was a presentation on surface area.   This presentation was for student in the geometry class and due to the time constraints I wasn’t going to be able to spend a week on surface area so we set up the PowerPoint in a very simple manner and in a way that students wouldn’t feel intimidated to know and memorize everything.  

    One of the things I was most proud of was the beginning slide where we introduce the surface area formula but then we flash in a bright yellow box that says ‘ Wait…You thought you were going to have to memorize this?!?’.  The students had already been learning about area of regular and compound shapes and we didn’t want to bog them down with learning all the formulas for surface area as well.  That would come in time with use.  The students got a little laugh out of it and I could tell a noticeable difference in their mood when we worked on the rest of the presentation.  The next slides were very neat with our prisms in color and tables spread out to help them step-by-step so they can understand what is going on and why they are correct.  After this presentation surface area wasn’t nearly as difficult as I had done it in years before.

   There are a few things I would do differently however.  The PowerPoint doesn’t really go into much detail on how the surface area formula works and there aren’t any pictures of real objects where it would be necessary to find surface area for.  If you can find ways that can prove to them they may actually need to know the content it can be very beneficial.  I’m always the kind of teacher where I don’t want to show students and then tell them to do it just because I say so.  I want them to know why these practices work.  I also would have inserted other questions that involved objects other than rectangular prisms.  I could also have students collaborate to make their own 3d objects and dimensions and then pass them on to another group to solve for the surface area. 

   As stated before the students took the presentation well.  It didn’t have many flashy animations or wild colors, or other artwork that would take away from the content.  The students liked the tables and I would have them fill out the tables on the board as we went so I could get more student involvement.  I used PowerPoints on a regular basis to transition from bell work to content for the day and to have students think about essential questions for our objectives. 

Lesson Three Word Processing and Databases

This week we read over documents about proper uses of word processing software and databases in the classroom.  Word Processing software has come a long way from creating letters and essays.  Word processors can now create flyers utilizing graphs, images and different types of text to create an interesting document that make the reader drawn to complete the work.  Databases are very useful tools that help provide insight on students if used properly among teachers across grades.  You can use databases when collecting thoughts for higher order thinking problems and group ideas to help students understand the content better.  We need to be utilizing this technology to the fullest because as we studied over the digital Bloom's Taxonomy we can see how technology is becoming synonymous with higher understanding.  We don't want to just have students type of papers, but make real products that could be used in the real world.  

Through our tech explorations I learned so much more about text to speech software which I had never really even used before, but could be very useful tools for students who have trouble with their vision and with students that don't like to read or type as well.  The DSpeech software could basically make any text that I placed in the box into words in english and other languages as well.  This would certainly help educators with students who don't understand english very well.  I learned more about the reading text software on my own computer and orally presented a paragraph that came up with little mistakes in a text box.  I learned that webquests are much more than online tasks for students to complete.  True webquests that will benefit students will have higher order thinking questions that will ask them to analyze data and make inferences based upon their analysis and present it in a fashion you may see in the real world.  

When asked to think about documents that I would present to students and parents I immediately thought of the negative parts of my documents.  Many times the documents would appear bland, only in black and white with little body to it other than bullets and boxes for lessons presented within the month.  I didn't really even send out much information to parents.  I would post information up on my teacher webpage, but did little else in the way for making flyers or newsletters for parents.  However I also understand that you don't want to make letters that are cluttered with useless tech.  The main thing to do is make your letter look professional and thoughtful so parents and students want to read the contents without getting distracted by pictures or strange fonts.  The Image to the right is an example of how I would use word processors to create professional looking flyers as an introduction to students and parents and to express my expectations for the class.  I see more clearly now how word processors can be useful tools to keep students and parents informed.  When they are informed they have opportunities to make better decisions that will help them succeed in the classroom. 

Lesson Two Spreadsheets & Databases

From lesson two I was asked to look up websites documenting the use of spreadsheets and databases in the classroom.  I found that these tools are on the rise in usage by teachers for multiple reasons.  Excel is a valuable tool where you can conduct calculations similar in function to graphing calculators.  The majority of students will have some form of Microsoft Office and the calculating functions of excel are excellent tools.  Databases are even less used in the classroom, but are great tools to break down large topics into manageable pieces that students can analyze and infer from to get a better understanding of the big picture based upon the minor details than trying to understand the whole thing.  Many educators are using databases to store student information about behaviors and academic tendencies so they are better prepared with each passing year.  It also helps you understand your students better so you can teach them more effectively.  Several teachers are using spreadsheets as an easy informal gradebook they can quickly update and organize for grades without having to go through the trouble of setting up classes, and detailed information about each assignment. 

   One website I visited was title the Silicon Tower located at http://silicontower.blogspot.com/2010/02/using-spreadsheets-and-databases-in.html.  Contained within this blog was a page devoted to spreadsheets and databases.  The author goes into detail how spreadsheets function and their relative advantages to educators in the classroom.  The author explains how spreadsheets can calculate large quantities of data quickly for both educators and students.  It’s also an easy task of taking analytical data and constructing visual representations of that data in the form of graphs.  One of the surprising things I found out about databases was the relative ease it takes to group and form relationships with data in a way that you can infer and answer questions based upon the data collected.  It groups relevant information as you make categories and if students don’t entire understand a topic you can form a database based upon the principles of that topic and get a better idea of the main point.  This is an organized way to help explain complex subjects to students.  I am also linking to an example website that utilizes databases for gather information and then using spreadsheets to interpret and utilize the information gained from the database construction.  The website is from Matthew Gudenius – Educational Technology Integreation found at  http://gudenius.weebly.com/spreadsheetdb-activities.html

   In the past I have used spreadsheets in a fairly regular basis to discuss mathematical topics dealing with graphing data.  We would collect data together in a group activity and then use the spreadsheet to interpret our data as a bar graph, line, or circle graph.  I have also used spreadsheet to place bell ringers on the board due to the fact you can easily calculate answers to several computations.  I have used spreadsheets when teaching about functions to students by creating function tables.  I have not used databases directly in class instruction but I have used them in creating student information databases that will help teachers for the next school year when they have my students.  I could see using databases would be very useful in a social studies context when you are presenting a major unit.  The database can be made up of the different daily lessons that will pull together to form the main context of your unit and provide the overall understanding form the parts to the sum.