Chastened by a student

OK, so a student emailed me this week and suggested that I start up a blog about all of this tech stuff and I felt a bit chagrined. Here I am requiring them to blog about all of this stuff and I'm not really doing it myself. So here I am, blogging about this stuff.

I guess my first step is to conceptualize what I want to have on this blog. Perhaps y'all could comment back and let me know what you would like to see. I'm thinking the following:

1. Profiles of cool tools and ways we can use them in the classroom
2. Tutorials
3. Articles
4. Surveys
5. Goings on including conferences and my own workshops and presentations

What do you think? Let me know what else I should add to the page...

Questions for the Media-Rich Lesson Plan Reflection

Here are the things that you need to address in your reflection:

1. Summarize an article on using technology effectively in the classroom (see the link in an earlier post).

2. Discuss how your lesson plan does or does not exhibit characteristics of effective technology integration as outlined in the article. Be specific.

3. Describe the implementation of your lesson plan. What went well, what didn't, what did you learn from the experience, etc.

4. Identify one NETS standard for teachers for which this lesson plan demonstrates your growth as a teacher. Be specific about how this artifact corresponds with and shows your growth in that standard.

5. Identify one NETS standard for students for which this lesson plan will help your students. Be specific about how this artifact corresponds with and helps your students grow in that standard.

6. Evaluate your progress regarding technology use over the course of this semester. How has this lesson plan changed your beliefs about technology use? Name two specific areas in which you still need to develop and cite some specific ways that you might improve in those areas.

This Week

Welcome back! This week, you should have:

1. Your technology interview

2. Your tech interview reflection (blog)

3. An idea or, preferably, a script for your digital story

If you have not given me your blog address post-crash, please do so as soon as possible. I'm trying to get grade reports up for you but need the blogs to get those done.

Some people asked for more ideas for the digital story, so here are some resources where you can find some that other people have done:

Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling

Center for Digital Storytelling

DigiTales

Hope those give you some good ideas. Remember that you can use children's stories, poems, songs, etc. as well as works of your own creation as long as you cite where you got everything and, if possible, ask for permission.

I'll see you on Thursday!

Hard Drive Failure

Hey, all. As you may or may not know, my hard drive crashed and burned a few weeks ago. I need each of you to send me your blog addresses again as soon as possible.

Thanks!

Dr. Cox

Article for your lesson reflection

I promised to give you an article to help you with that your lesson reflection paper, and here it is. Though the article is geared toward teaching science, the principles are the same across all disciplines. Your reference for the article should look like this:

Irving, K.E. (n.d.). Effective and appropriate uses of educational technology in science classrooms. Retrieved date (fill the date in), from: http://www.ohiorc.org/cor/student_learning/Effective_and_Appropiate_Uses.pdf

You should cite it in your paper like this: (Irving, n.d.)

Read the article and then critically evaluate what you did for your lesson using the principles introduced in the article, including focus on curriculum rather than tech for its own sake, the use of appropriate pedagogy of which technology is a part, using the unique features of technology, active learning, etc.

Let me know if you have any questions!

Dr. Cox

WebQuest and Digital Story Rubrics

In case anyone is interested, here are the grading criteria for the WebQuest and Digital Story.

Writing the WebQuest

In our discussion today, you all agreed on the following:

Good things to include in your WebQuest:
- Clear instructions and concise information
- Lots of white space
- Good links
- Sufficient guidance
- Engaging activities
- Lots of good resources
- Eye-catching/pleasing
- Adaptable
- Good Navigation

Things to avoid:
- flashy animations and colors
- clutter
- TMI
- Redundancy
- Bland, repetitive visual design
- Bad links
- Long and boring text
- Biased information

Now, your homework is to write your introduction, task, and conclusion, and to start finding the resources that you will include in your Quest. Use Google Docs so that you can all collaborate on it. My PowerPoint may help remind you what to include in each part, so I've included it below. Have fun!