Final Post for EDCI 505

I have enjoyed this class a lot.  I wasn't sure how I was going to like some of the technologies and by using them frequently, I grew to like them more and feel more comfortable using them.  I have learned a lot and feel that I grew in my skills.  And all of these technologies I will be practicing using and then  incorporating into my classroom when I get one.

#11 Electronic Portfolio

The electronic portfolio is a nice ending to the class I believe because it forces us to look back at all the assignments we completed.  By doing this, we can see how much we grew in advancing our technology skills.  And it is a great way to showcase our final products too.

#10 Web Authoring - Webquest

This assignment was to create a webpage according to the subject you will teach.  With all the resources provided to us, we were able to learn why web authoring webquests can be very enhancing to our teaching, especially in the digital age.  The webquest helped us plan and develop a lesson plan by creating an introduction, describing what is expected in the task, and the actions that you want your students to carry out in the process, and then assessing the students with the final product with rubrics. 

This assignment was the greatest challenge for me yet.  Considering I have no classroom experience as of yet, the rubric part was the most challenging since I have never made one.  And creating a lesson was also challenging but I got through it.  I have created lesson plans for all the classes I have taken through the Bachelor's Plus Program, but I have never taught any of those lessons to see whether or not I would sink or swim.  It took me about 18 hours to create my webquest.  It was a challenge, fun, and I learned a few more things I didn't know about the American Revolution that I was never taught in school.  If you want to check it out, here is the link:

http://theamericanrevolutionanewnation.weebly.com/

#9 Podcasting/Desktop Movie Follow-up

I had a lot of fun with this assignment.  I was trying to figure out what topic I wanted to do.  I wanted to do it on a different topic in history, something I hadn't done for any of my other assignments.  Talking with others about researching their family tree and talking about my own research with them, it came to me on what my topic would be - immigration; the geneology side of immigration.  It has been a very interesting topic to me for quite some time, so that is what I did.  Here is the link so you can watch:

#8 Wiki

The assignment for the Wiki was fun because I was able to find a lot of new internet resources that I can incorporate into my classroom.  And all the topics were very interesting.  To create the Wiki, I looked at several online sites for the topics and chose two that facinated me the most.  As a Social Studies person, virtual field trips and timelines drew my attention far more than any of the other topics.  Then I researched for more links for others who view my page to use as references.  But I was frustrated a little bit with adding the videos to my Wiki.  After a little researching on what the issue I was having was, I had no problems whatsoever.  I had fun creating it.  And I know I will use it in my classroom some day.  You can view my Wiki at:

http://lauramaro.pbworks.com/

#9 Podcasting/Desktop Movie

This assignment is interesting to me as well as challenging.  I have worked with the desktop movie program before but not to the extent of putting in a narration or a video from YouTube.  The extent that I have used the desktop movie program was inserting several photos of the M&M's Gingerbread Villiage (a family tradition) that my uncle and I put together every year for Christmas.  I picked several different transitions to get from one picture to the next, inserted some text and then put the movie to Christmas music.  So this assignment is going to be a fun challenge because I can learn more functions the program has to offer and come up with a topic I really enjoy.  I will post more on the assignment after its completion.

#3 Word Processing

All I ever knew about Word Processing was using it for writting papers, letters, creating a resume document, making lists, and putting in graphs, tables, and pictures throughout the paper if it called for it.  This assignment showed me much more.  I was able to learn how to save a picture to the background and write over it, make breaks in the document to write in different blocks, and learned more about the tables that I was using. 

For this assignment, I picked the topic of the Oregon Trail because Westward Expansion is one of my favorite times in American History.  I thought that this would be a useful document in order to help my students learn the material throughout the Westward Expansion unit I would be teaching.  I will try to post it later.

#6 Spreadsheets/database

This assignment for creating spreadsheets to keep records for all classes a teacher teaches in one day was great.  It is a great oganizational system that I would definately create for my classrooms to keep everything seperate.  It is also a great way to show me, as a teacher where I need to differentiate and/or change my teaching strategies depending on what grades look like. 

https://spreadsheets0.google.com/a/ashland.edu/ccc?authkey=CJrM6ccJ&hl=en&key=tesNBE4jJSW49EFgEjcxRpQ&hl=en&authkey=CJrM6ccJ#gid=0

#4 Blogging

I had always heard of blogging but never took the time to do it.  The blogging assignment introduced this new way of communicating to a wider range of people and topics.  I had a rough time getting going on this because it was all new to me and I am still learning all the ropes.  In the process of playing around on here, I found things to use and how to manipulate things.  As some might have seen, I had already blogged on assignment #4 and accidently deleted by trying certain things.  So I decided to write about it again and share my experience with getting to know the program more.

#5 Graphic Organizers

Graphic organizers are used to actively engage students in the learning process.  It is a visual tool that helps students to comprehend what they are learning.  It is a tool to help guide a teachers' lecture and be an activity or study guide for a student on a particular topic, subject, book the student is reading.  There are a lot of free graphic organizers online that you can find for every content subject.  And there are programs you can use to make up your own graphic organizer like Inspiration 9 that a lot of students used for this class assignment. 

I used the program Inspriation 9 to create my graphic organizer.  I loved the program.  I thought it was really easy to used.  The hardest thing for me was picking a topic that I really liked.  And one I chose a topic, the next question was, how am I going to break it down.  I love history so I had a hard time picking a topic that I wanted to do since I like everything History.  So I finally thought that the topic I would do my graphic organizer on was the Civil War.  And then I got into thinking, how much do students know about the Civil War?  How many older people know what events led up to the Civil War for the Civil War to start?  But I kept in mind that there is so much information on that era that I thought it could be broken up into two parts so students didn't feel so overwhelmed.  So, I created a graphic organizer called "Events Leading Up To the Civil War, Part 1."  With creating a second graphic organizer that starts off with were Part 1 leaves off and leading up to the start the Civil War.  I had fun with this assignment.