Thing 21 (Plus): Capstone Reflection on Things 15-21

As I have explained in my last few posts, I will be using a number of the tools from this course in planning and preparing materials for AP World History, Model UN and History of Thought.  This course has exposed me to a number of great tools that will help me reach more kids in more diverse ways and, hopefully, improve their learning of skills and content.  The tools will also allow me to vary the methods kids use to respond to assignment materials and tasks.

What I am planning will involve them applying technical tools and skills to various levels of thinking.  They will also allow the kids to do many of the tasks when it is most convenient for them.  Some of what I will do will allow students to test themselves until they reach minimum competency or higher. I have much thinking, planning and creating to do this summer.  It will be fun.

The Thing that has been my focus for the last third of the course has been Virtual Classrooms.  I am really jazzed to put together a very usable web site for my AP History course and, if I have to, plan and produce an online environment for my Model UN course.  For my AP course, the kids will use the site that I created as well as the publisher's online textbook site.  I have also created a Facebook group called Bacon WHAPped History as a means to communicate with my students quickly and as a container for RSS feeds on topics useful to the course.  While I want them to connect to this page, I do not expect them to "friend" me unless they want to.  I never "friend" a student. 

I have gotten an excellent education through this course.  It sparked all kinds of ideas and fired me up as a teacher to try and to do new things.  I want to thank you, Ron, for modifying the generic version of this course to fit our "needs" and responsibilities here in Michigan. 

Thing 21: Screencasting

Screen cast links from the Summer Assignment page on my AP World History web site. I will be creating a number of screen casts this summer about assignments and how-to for the kids in all my classes. The first two are fairly rough in the delivery, but the content is there and pretty clear and organized.  A number of the kids who are going to take AP World in the fall have already registered for the online textbook.  They told that the screen cast was helpful in know what link to click and what to type in where.  The textbook publisher does put a user through a number of hoops to get access to the site.  The second screen cast instructs kids on how to navigate around the site and to find what parts of it I want them to use.  

The technical aspects of using Camtasia were so easy.  The rough part was me trying to speak clearly and with as little verbal "garbage" as possible.  I am a work in progress.

How to Register for the Online Textbook Site

How to Navigate the Online Textbook Site

Thing 20: Visual Learning

I have used both app-based and online graphic organizers before, but I hadn't used Bubbl.us.  I really liked how simple it was to use.  The learning curve is pretty level.  Kids could pick up on how to use this pretty quickly.  I also had a real reason for creating my web.  I have to come up with various pros an cons to offering Eastern's Model UN class in different ways than we have traditionally done.  It was nice that it automatically adjusted the color of the bubble depending on the layer of the link.  

A number of teachers at Eastern are using Wordle.  I just recently used it, along with Comic Life, to create an invitation for students to sign up for my History of Thought course.  It was pretty easy to use and I think created a visually attractive and useful image with which to "market" what we cover in the course.  We will see how the invite works it magic this week. 

Thing 19: Virtual Classrooms

As I read the requirements for this Thing, I thought back to a conversation I had this week with my principal at Eastern about how tentative the survival of my Model UN and History of Thought courses are right now.  The budget belt is really being tightened and I need a much larger number of kids to enroll in the courses.  One idea I had this weekend was to offer the course as a night course that meets once a week for three quarters of the school year for a half a credit.  Its a structure we had at Forest Hills Central when I was there.  Offering the course as a one-a-week night class would allow kids who are interested, but can't sign up because of prior course needs and commitments during the day to take the class.

Another option is to design the course to run online as a virtual classroom.  This would allow kids to complete assignments when it is more convenient for them to do the work.  For most it would be an overload class in addition to the 6 classes they take during the day.  The major components as structured now are:

• structure and function information about the United Nations and other international organizations
• world geography in the 20th century
• identify specific political, social, economic, and technological concepts and apply them to analyzing current world issues
• training in writing position papers and resolutions
• training in how to speak effectively and extemporaneously in public
• training in how to research information
• training in how negotiate and persuade small groups
• training in how to debate

These course activities are now done on a daily basis because the tradition over the last 8 years was to schedule it during the day to make it convenient for the instructor.  Many, but not all of these components could be part of a virtual course online.  Combining some face-to-face instruction, with screencasts and videos, and online research and writing requirement could be a possible solution to kids who have an interest but not the time during the day to take the course.
Are their potential pitfalls? Sure.  One of the goals of the course is to have students sign up to take it more than one year to build a talent pool that can compete well at Model UN conferences.  That means you would like some freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors to take the class.  It would mean a diverse course curriculum to match various grade levels, years of experience and skills with online materials and videos.  Other pitfalls include student access to technology primarily at home as well as access at school.
Time to design and digitalize the course is an issue.  Where to host the course needs to be considered.  Mentoring and monitoring students who you see infrequently is an issue.  However, for all the things you need to think about, this course just might work with an online curriculum.  The district just might go for it because they do want kids to have the experiences.
As someone who has been the Michigan Virtual mentor as both Central High and Eastern, the biggest determining factor for a student to succeed with an online course is self discipline.  Being smart or not being so smart is much less of a factor in my view than how much self discipline a student has. Do they have the emotional intelligence to stay on task, finish work on deadline and seek help when they have a problem.  Along with student emotional intelligence, do the kids have the positive support at home to help keep them motivated. 

Thing 18: Staying Informed

This is the  home page on my computer. I created this iGoogle page about 3 years ago and intermittently change what widgets are on the screen and what blogs I subscribe to.  I check the headlines and blog posts every morning when I get to work (as well as the sites I have bookmarked).  It helps me stay informed and I find interesting articles that I send on to the teachers in my school.  I also find materials that help me in the classroom and interesting tidbits I can share with kids.  Since I am in the midst of creating my AP World History web site, I will try to find a way for me to create a page of world history RSS feeds for use by me and my students. 

Thing 17: Research and Reference

1.  Student Research: I modified the first part of the assignment.  My district subscribes to some Cengage/Gale Infotrac databases.  Additionally, three years ago, I bought a number of Cengage/Gale's reference ebooks.  Eastern has it own page for the databases and ebooks, and, as media specialist, I have worked hard to get both teachers and students to use them effectively. If you would like the non-district login password to check them out, just contact me.  My efforts have been modestly successful.  All the language arts teachers in the high school require students to use the Infotrac databases for research papers, but most of the other teachers in social studies, science, etc. only infrequently require kids to use them.  When I can get kids and teachers to think about using them, and I show them all the ways they can search, cite, and distribute the information they find, they are thrilled that I have saved them a ton of time. 
I compared my databases against those of SIRS Renaissance.  The first thing I noticed is that SIRS allows for natural language searching.  Infotrac is strictly a keyword/subject search engine.  Point to SIRS.  In terms of GUI, I think that Infotrac is more attractive and clearer and cleaner to use. Point to Infotrac.  I did a search on both using the keyword/subject "philosophy".  Infotrac returned many more hits than did SIRS even though SIRS lists the term as a specific subject.  However, while Infotrac delivered more results, it also defaulted to treating the term as a keyword rather than a subject and most of the hits were sources where the term appeared, but did directly deal with the subject of philosophy.  SIRS result list did treat the term as a subject.  More direct hits. On the other hand, Infotrac did deliver more material about the subject of philosophy when the search was modified.  Point to neither.  When I click on the same magazine article of each, I believed that the layout of the page of Infotrac was better organized with its tools more clearly identified, the font was clearer, the citation options included different versions of MLA as well as APA formats.  They both as the same tools for sharing, bookmarking, printing, etc., but Infotrac was easier to navigate then SIRS in my view. Point to Infotrac.

2.  Advanced Research:  One of the many Infotrac databases Forest Hills doesn't s subscribe to is Educator's Reference Complete.  We thought about it a number of years ago, but decided it was too pricy.  For many of the same reasons I like the look and feel of our databases at Eastern, I like the look and feel of this Infotrac database.  I did a search for articles concerning "web 2.0".  The search returned 319 full text articles.  As with our Infotrac results, I like the detail that each "hit" contains.  It is very useful to know not only how many words, but how many pages would printed if I decided I needed a hard copy.  The results list defaults to putting the most recent article at the top.  Sometimes this is useful, but I would prefer that the best results given my search terms are at the top rather than just the most current.  You CAN choose Relevant to resort, but it should be the default.  It is very useful that you can refine your search to only include "Peer Reviewed" materials.  Cuts out the "popular" publications and add authenticity to the results.  As with any database, it does not have everything possible in terms of all publications dealing with every subject of education.  But it comes closer than any other data I have used.

3.  Work Cited-1: 

4. Works Cited-2:

 

Thing 16: Professional Learning Networks

I had enrolled at the Michigan LearnPort site a number of years ago.  Our district used it for us to take the OSHA Safety Review Course. Since then, I have occasionally visited the site, but haven't taken any course through it.  I might have, however, if I hadn't run into this course.

I also have already signed up with Facebook and Twitter.  I joined Facebook primarily so I could communicate with students I had in class about class matters.  I am VERY CAREFUL about what I post.  I NEVER "friend" a student.  They should never be put in the uncomfortable position of having to decide whether or not to accept my request.  I almost always accept a "friend" request from a student and to date have only "defriended" on former student.  Once one Facebook, however, I discovered that most of my out-of-school friends and my family on using it.  It is a great way to keep track of their day-to-day happenings; especially those of my daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren. 

Twitter is something I signed on to, but really don't have the ego to just tweet a grocery list and believe anyone cares.  I do have a couple of students following me as well as my sister-in-law in Boston, but I don't use it much.  I see it as an educational tool.  It could be used as a quick one question quiz tool for kids to respond to.  It also would be very useful for any emergency changes in class work or a schedule.  One of the problems of using Twitter in my school is the iffy nature of cell phone connections.  We are far enough away from a tower at Eastern so that connectivity with some service providers is dependent on weather conditions and location in the building. However, I am connected to a Twitter "newspaper" created by Kelly Kermode called Kelly Kermode's Daily Tweetpaper.  

I have also a member of MACUL Space. Again, I have to admit that I don't take advantage of all the resources and information sources I could use.  I could claim I don't have time, but I what I really mean is that I have not allocated my time to educate myself and use these tools and information sources.

I 

I am presently a member of MACUL.  I have been a member on and off for a few years and I am back on because of the encouragement of Kelly Kermode, a MACUL board member and friend.  Really, I should always have been a member given my job as media specialist and my interests in educational technology.  Part of my problem is that I am not much of a joiner of organizations.  Generally, I will join one, spend the money and think a year later what did I get for the investment.  This happened years ago with ISTE ($39-$212), American Library Association ($65-$130 plus associate group membership fees) and MAME ($50). For the money, I think that MACUL gives me the biggest bang.
If I were to be more active in MACUL, I believe that I would demonstrate a willingness to try new technologies and ideas to get kids to learn whether it is formal content or reading, writing, thinking and technology skills.  Kelly is trying to get me to participate more, share more and learn more from other members. 

Thing 15: Productivity Tools

A few years ago the school district purchased Adobe CS 3 and since then I have had a full version of Adobe Acrobat on my laptop.  I have found it quite valuable to not only see .pdf files (a fairly ubiquitous file type for documents meant to be seen in their original form), but also to create .pdf's from Word files, Comic Life pages, etc.  What I really need to do is spend time with some of the more interesting bells and whistles of Acrobat, like forms, comments, markups, interactive pages, etc. 
I tried to get Media-Convert to load, but it wouldn't.  I used Zamzar before and in a crunch I would use it again. In my job as media specialist, I find having applications on my laptop much more convenient than using an online file converter.  It is a daily occurrence for kids to come in with the .docx files or other Windows files need to be converted to earlier versions.  They also some in with Word Perfect files, AppleWorks files, Microsoft Works files, etc. and I need a variety of software to do the job.  I keep the latest version of Microsoft Office on my laptop along with Open Office, Neo Office, Pages, Numbers and Keynote. The number of kids toting Macs in school is remarkable. It certainly would be cheaper to use an online converter and I have shown kids where to find them and also had kids create text files, etc. using Google Docs, but typically they need this paper, Powerpoint, spreadsheet NOW and can't wait for their document to be converted and sent back to them by email. 
When I want to convert video, I go a bit old school and use a very good application on my desktop: iSkysoft Video Converter. I found that Zamzar was just too slow.  iSkysoft cost me $40 and is worth every penny.  I purchased it because I wanted to convert the YouTube videos I downloaded into a more Mac friendly form.  I download online videos from YouTube and other sites using an Firefox addon called Fast Video Download.  It is one of many, and may not be the best, but it does what I want.  Once I download a video or segments of videos, I can join them and convert them to .avi, .mov, m4v, etc.  I can also take a full video that I have and segment it into file sizes more easily dealt with. 
I created a Google Calendar to link with the AP World History course for the summer. I am working on embedding it on a page of my iWeb-based web site for the course.  I am hoping that using the Google Calendar is easier to work with than the Mobile Me iCal calendars I have used in the past.

Thing 14 (Plus): Capstone Reflection on Things 8-14

As I think I said in an earlier post, I am a word oriented guy.  I have to work hard to visually represent concepts and information.  Some of these tools will be of great assistance to me. The use of Discovery Streaming and iTunes U will aid me not only in visual representations but also help me with visually and audio oriented learners.  I have already begun to require my kids to pay close attention to copyright issues when using photos by having them create a MLA bibliography for all the photos they used or will use for the end of year projects.
For my final project in AP World History, I am giving the kids a great deal of latitude to design their final project using a variety of media and technology.  A screenshot of the choices they have is below.  Once each person or group has designed their final project, I will then go to Rubistar and create an assessment rubric to each project.
My assignment matrix allows kids to read, write, film, record, design, build, etc. They have to choose certain concepts to use, specific regions of the world, and a broad time period.  Within those expectations they have the flexibility to pick a world historical topic.  The one major restriction is that the topic cannot substantially involve the United States. In terms of the form of the project, they can write a paper, write a short story, write poetry, write and record music, create an annotated bibliography, create a Google Lit trip, create a video, create a Photo Story, create a diorama, paint pictures, create a comic book using Comic Life, write and perform a play or skit, or create a strategy and tactics board game.

I would expect that the Marzano criteria that most closely fits this project is similarities and differences.  They certainly will be clarifying, classifying, creating analogies and metaphors. In terms of Michigan standards, most of the projects will satisfy standard 3.2:
Represent ideas using a combination of technologies aimed at reaching a diverse audience (voice, data, video, graphics, etc.)

Thing 14: Online Video and Audio Resources

The Forest Hills District has subscribed to Discover Education alone and as part of the ISD for at least 10 years.  The quality of the videos has gotten much better since it was purchased by the Discovery Channel.  Not only have most, but not all, of the technical glitches been resolved, but the Discovery Channel has included numerous videos and other materials from their own collections.  They have also improved the teacher support for both curriculum materials and for how to save and store videos for particular courses, classes and students.  Below is screenshot of my folders that I created for the high school and middle school.  They are a bit out of date right now, but a year ago I asked our teachers for the key topics they covered in their courses and then searched the Discovery Education catalog and grouped them by core subject and specific subjects inside the folder.
I thought I was doing something that most of the staff would appreciate as a time saver.  What I found out was that most of the staff didn't use it, because most of the staff at Eastern doesn't use the site.  Other schools in the district, however, are regular and heavy users of the site. 
I have just created a new folder for my AP World History Summer Assignment and will put videos in the specific chapter folders that will provide corresponding visual information to the text materials in their book.

As I said above, most of the time there are not technical glitches anymore.  It used to be that the video and audio streaming could arrive out of sync or that the file format of the downloaded video didn't match your player or browser addon.  Today, however, my biggest irritation with the site is that even though the videos are available in QuickTime, there must be some problem with the newest version of the player and the videos.  The site keeps asking me to download version 7 of the player while I am running version 10 of the entire QuickTime app.  I am going to see if this is resolved by trying to watch the videos from home rather than school.  Theoretically, we shouldn't be having any streaming video issues through our specific Forest Hills account.  

Our district just recently opened up iTunes so I can now use iTunes U.  Much of the content is focused on higher education, but I will use some of the shorter audio and video lectures on philosophy in my History of Thought course next fall.  I have looked at the world history offerings and think that many of them are too esoteric for my kids.  But I keep looking for new materials. 

Right now, I think that the video tools are more useful to me than the audio.  In world history, they help kids visualize the concepts and lives of people more concretely than just the textbook. 

Thing 13: Online Interactive Learning Tools

Here is a screen shot of Gig Harbor, Washington.  The home of my daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren.  If my wife has here way, it will also become our retirement destination.

The next screen shot is of Eastern High School during construction in 2003.  The pin locates where my media center is within the building.

On Friday, May 6, I had my AP World History kids go to Quizlet and use the AP World flash cards for review.  Most of they appreciated the fact that the card stack existed and they didn't have to create their own.  I asked them to note some terms they thought ought to have been in the stack and weren't. They gave them to me and I will try to add some cards to the stack.  I could see this as a very useful tool for reviewing key concepts and terms; names and dates; places and periods, etc.

Thing 12: Assessment, Evaluation and Survey Tools

I created a survey of 5 questions that I sent to 10 students by email. 6 replied. Three of the questions could be answered with a choice of button and two were short answer. A flaw with the survey was that when I was asking about their classroom teacher's use of technology I did not mean any course they were taking online through Michigan Virtual.  Almost all of the kids I sent the survey to are taking one or more online classes along with seat-time classes in the building.  Regardless, they all find the composition and tools available in their online classes and, to some extent, the technology of their seat-time classes very valuable.

The rubric I created at Rubistar will be used for the final project of my History of Thought course.  It is a multimedia rubric form for assessing the Comic Life books to be created by each of my students in which they will use two of the philosophers we have studied discussing the key themes of the first film of the Matrix trilogy.  My screen could't hold the whole rubric, so the screen shot will be a partial.  The most important of the criteria to be assessed will be the content.  Using Comic Life is a way for them to have to have a "serious" conversation about the film from the perspective of two different philosophers with, hopefully, much of the padding and fluff removed. 

My district is in the midst of incorporating data-driven decision making, data warehousing, changing our student information system, trying to get more of our teachers to use course managements systems an online assessment tools.  When I was just a media specialist, I learned about these various tools without a vested interest in their daily use because I didn't teach class or have students reporting to me. This year, however, I have been teaching three different subjects and am beginning to wade deeply into each of the data the district uses or will change to next year.  I have to admit that in this first year returned to the classroom, I spend very little time during the school year thinking about or incorporating the data or the tools into my teaching.

I believe that Forest Hills is using whatever data warehousing and analysis system the state of Michigan is using.  I know that some of our teachers have piloted an effort to use the data on their students to refine their formative assessments.  Kelly Kermode at Eastern is taking the lead on assisting teachers in our building.  Two years ago, the district, in a pretty dramatic and arbitrary manner, switched teachers off of Edline to CIMS as our student information system.  It was a pretty painful transition and starting next school year I believe we will upgrade to Power School.  The district, for its part this time, has sought staff imput frequently to review the program and I think it is a "go" for next fall.  

The district itself does not support a particular a course management system.  We rely on the ISD's offering of Moodle and our Michigan Virtual online students use Blackboard.  School Center is used by many of our teachers as the host for their course or classroom web sites. Significant efforts have been made over the last 5 years not to print out surveys and questionnaires, but to use digital systems like Survey Monkey, Zoomerang and, now most prominently, Google Forms.  A few of our teachers have paid to use Quia for the creating and administration of assessments.  

I have to admit I think I have an intuitive sense of both formative and summative assessments, but I REALLY need to formalize my planning and alignment of what I teach to state and national standards.  I want to do it.  It takes time and real thinking beyond the subject content.  I also need to plan out my tests more carefully, especially in my AP World History course. 

Thing 11: Presentation Tools

Here is the link to my Prezi presentation "A Person's National Identity is Determined By..." The screen shot is below.

Here is the Creative Commons license for the presentation.  I just may be dumb, I couldn't figure out how to put it on the presentation itself.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.

Once I become more facile with how do make presentations, I could see a number of uses for this with students.  In world history I could see kids having to define the criteria for certain concepts and using the visual elements to "rank" which of the criteria were more important for a certain civilization or time period.  In philosophy, I could see my kids using this to create presentations about specific philosophers and the factors that influenced their ideas, both internal and external.
I think this would be much more useful than Powerpoint.  Once you get over the initial learning curve, I think the few choices kids get to make in terms of colors and backgrounds and fonts, requires them to put more into the content.

Here is the screen shot of zoomed in section of my AP World History web page.  I have a Mac and followed the instructions on the System Preferences screen, but it still took me a bit to get just the right feel on the trackpad so it didn't pop up a set of Finder choices.  I also had a problem using Jing to take just the screen shot I wanted.  To engage the app after you have zoomed in requires scrolling across the window and then scroll back.  But I could quite get the selection box to move exactly where I wanted it to snap a picture.  I couldn't get it to go far enough up or to the opposite side of the screen to get the shot I wanted.  Again, this is probably a problem that would get solved with more use and experimentation.  I definitely could use this tool when I try to explain elements of visual primary documents in the AP world history course.  Kids have difficulty identifying symbols and their meaning in cartoons and this would be a big help to spot the more subtle elements.