Blog Entry 5: Supporting Student Communication

Chapter 3 in Egbert's book talked about the need for collaboration in the classroom. The chapter talked about many positive aspects of collaboration amongst students. The concept that I was interested in was Learning Focus (71). The author shows socializing is not beneficial unless the students are communicating about concepts. Socializing has no value in the classroom if the students are not discussing concepts and ideas. This also requires each member have a participatory role in the group and provide input. I have noticed in my classroom when I have collaborative assignments with Google Docs I often have students e-mailing about off-task subjects or more concerned about the individuals working on the document with them. I have to constantly refocus them or remove the e-mail feature of Google Docs until I can refocus them. What I take from this section is socialization with out content focus is nothing more than talking.

Egbert, J. (2009). Supporting learning with technology: Essentials of classroom practice. Columbus: Pearson.

Blog Entry 4: Comic Life

Comic Life is an application allowing students to easily create comic book
pages or an entire comic book. It allows students to use their own images
and drawings as panels. The author can manipulate the panels, font and background designs. The application is very simple and creates exciting presentations enjoyed by many audiences.

My Comic Life dealt with the subject of social behavior and emotions. My school has been conducting classes dealing with decision-making skills and talking about the emotions teenagers deal with in their lives. As you know the teen years can be very challenging for students and teachers alike, we are trying to help them understand it is normal to have many different emotions, but you must make good decisions in dealing with them. I created a presentation that showed various emotions being displayed by various individuals and used speech bubbles to add text the students could relate to. The Comic Life attempts to show non-verbal clues to the emotions the individuals are feeling and relate it back to the emotions the students feel on a daily basis. Comic Life places a concrete image to an abstract idea: emotions. This is highly effective for my visual learners. Comic Life literally placed a face on the emotions being described; please click the link to view the presentation.

I reviewed the article Using Comic Life in the Classroom , the author Amelia Courtis talks about the virtues of Comic Life in the classroom. She talks about the flexibility of Comic Life in the classroom and how all grades and subjects can use Comic Life in daily instruction. The author was very excited by the fact students had to use higher-thinking skills to create visual representation of ideas and concepts and it also gave the teacher more options in communicating their teaching point. Courtis thinks Comic Life is a very useful tool for the classroom and is a strong advocate of its use

Web 2.0 Fight

I have had an ongoing battle with the Technology department in my school district. I have been going back and forth over the virtues of Web 2.0 in the classroom and the savings it provides to the district. I think their major fear is that they do not fully understand the potential Web 2.0 provides to the students and the employees, but I think the gradual surge of technology will cause a paradigm shift in the district's view on Web 2.0.

Voice Thread Part 2

I used Voice Thread with my 5 classes and it was a definite hit. The students caught on so quickly and I watched in amazement as they listened to the tutorial I created and followed the directions with only a few students having issues. Since I am the Tech Specialist at my school I am going to create Voice Threads to share with my staff containing tutorials available for them to review. The Voice Thread has motivated me to place a requisition in to purchase microphones for the students to create entries to share with their classmates.

Blog Entry 3: Voice Thread

Voice Thread is a free Web 2.0 tool available to teachers and students. Known as a “group audio blog,” Voicethread allows users to record text and audio comments about uploaded images. Voicethread has two distinct advantages for classrooms: communicating and collaborating. Students and teachers are no longer limited by geographical or time constraints.

I am a middle school computer teacher and tech specialist. Voice Thread is very helpful to me. It allows me to visually describe and explain the concepts I am trying to convey (especially to the teachersJ). I have done some research on Voice Thread and found an article, Using Voicethread for Self-Assessment , a teacher discusses how they used Voice Thread to solicit as many responses as possible from images presented to students. The teacher was extremely impressed with the responses but was surprised in the amount of feedback that was received from the classes. The students took the feedback and used the suggestions to change their panels. Voice Thread encourages collaboration which is a higher order thinking skill. Voice Thread also gave the students the opportunity to either verbally communicate or use written text to provide their feedback. When students are given multiple forms of responding, the teacher is better equipped to evaluate the student’s assessment of the skill set they have presented. This article has shown me some great ideas that can be incorporated with Voice Thread, and shows the actual steps and thinking that went into producing the Voice Thread.

I have presented a Voice Thread showing my students how to create a document and save the document in the correct folders. This Voice Thread could easily be adapted to the teachers in my school. More often than not, they create documents and save them then they have no idea were the document is or if they saved it at all. I hope the students benefit from this tutorial and I hope the teachers archive the presentation on their desktops J to view my presentation click here.

Blog Entry 2: My Reading

While I was reading Chapter 2 in Supporting Learning with Technology, something struck me as funny. If you didn’t know how to speak Spanish, would your principal assign you to teach Spanish to your Spanish speaking students? I ask this because we often have teachers who are technologically-challenged attempting to teach digital natives. The 21st century student is quite comfortable using software and even if they are not familiar with the software are more than happy to explore and test it out, which by the way, I have found to be the best way to familiarize yourself with software. The chapter discussed the challenges teachers face and the main point that sticks out to me is the teacher has to become familiar with the software in order to anticipate and alleviate issues the students will have. When I get new software I like to personally use the software for a week before I introduce it to the students. I have 5 classes, and I only introduce the software to one class when I decide to unveil the software, similar to a pilot program. A pilot program allows you to find potential problems you will face and helps you prepare for the unexpected, which can be a major issue with technology integration.