MTI 562 Week 5: Assessment

Our Second Grade students were asked to use Microsoft Publisher to make a 4 page booklet to showcase information they had researched about the city they live in. These are the criteria I will be grading their projects by, based on Jacqui Murray's 14 Factors to Consider for Tech Report Cards :

• Does s/he remember skills from prior lessons as they complete current lessons? The office ribbon is the same or similar – did they transfer knowledge from Word & Powerpoint?
• Does s/he save to their network folder? Can I find the finished product in their folder on the 2nd Grade Drive?
• Does s/he try to solve tech problems themselves before asking for teacher help? How many times did they put their brick up?
• Does s/he use core classroom knowledge (i.e., writing conventions) in tech projects? Did they capitalize proper nouns and beginning of sentences?
• Does s/he use the internet safely? Did they go to Bing Images and stay there as directed, or did they wander around? Did they check that picture were from Bellevue, WA not Bellevue somewhere else?
• Does s/he [whichever Common Core Standard is being pursued by the use of technology. It may be ‘able to identify shapes’ in first grade or ‘able to use technology to add audio’ in fourth grade]? Did they illustrate publication using digital tools?
• Has student progressed at keyboarding skills? When I caught them using both hands to type the text they earned a ticket.
• Anecdotal observation of student learning (this is subjective and enables me to grade students based on effort). How much effort did they put in, how much did they help other students around them? How far above and beyond did they go (e.g. adding frames to photos)?
• Grades on tests, quizzes, projects. What is the quality of the finished product – do all 4 pages have the required content in the correct place?

MTI562 Week 4: Research Question – What tool should I use to build an internet start page for our students?

Article 1: Make Your Own Beautiful Customized Start Page

By Adam Dachis

Adam provides information about using deviantART’s download and editing the index.html to make an internet start page.

Article 2: How to Build your Custom Browser Start Page

By Tina Sieber

Tina outlines her need for her own start page and recommends the use of service called Awesomestart http://awesomestart.com/ to make an internet start page, or ‘yourminis’ to create a desktop of bookmarks (though that service seems to have been bought out by Aol and no longer functions). Her favorite is Pageflakes an Ajax homepage bought out by LifeUniverse.

Conclusion

I decided to go with Protopage (http://protopage.com/) which is still around after a good number of years, is easy to set up, meets all our needs and doesn’t require the installation of special apps and gizmos.

Bibliography

Dachis, Adam. "Make Your Own Beautiful, Customized Browser Start Page." Lifehacker. Lifehacker.com, 26 Jan. 2011. Web. 17 Oct. 2015.

Sieber, Tina. "How To Build Your Custom Browser Start Page."MakeUseOf. Makeuseof.com, 7 May 2008. Web. 17 Oct. 2015. 

MTI 562 Week 3 - Webtools and Common Core

I looked at several of the webtools mentioned in the class, but the free versions had limited numbers of time you can use them or restricted functions and you have to have an account to use them. Some don't seem to be around anymore – e.g. the link to Pupil Tube pulled up a Japanese site. My younger students (I work with K-5) are too young to have accounts of their own & it’s too hard maintaining usernames, passwords etc. I don’t like sites that have a lot of flashy (and sometimes inappropriate) commercials – we have quite a lot of students who struggle to stay focused and the last thing they need is flashy distractions! I like the tools where we can have a class or school account where we can choose the username and password e.g. Brain Pop, Renaissance Place, IXL Math, PicMonkey, Code.org etc. or where we can download the program and install it – Screencast-O-Matic, Sketchup, Notebeat etc. The challenge with working online is that it isn’t always available - we want to use TinkerCAD for 3D modelling now that we have a 3D printer, but the site has been down every time I checked this week so we will most likely use 3DTin instead. Yesterday our internet was down all day which would have been frustrating if we were solely dependent on online tools. Some of the resources listed look really cool, like Garage Band, but they are only for IOS devices and we are a Windows school (more than half our parents work for Microsoft). The one I found on this course that I found suitable for our needs is Dipity. We are going to get an account and use it to create timelines of important events in the history of the country the third graders are researching for the Cultural Fair. I also thought we could explore using Voki to make the speaking avatar that will read the students poetry. But if I approach it this way doesn't that run counter to how we are supposed to be working - I found a cool tool, now I am trying to find a lesson to use it in?!

Problem Solving in the Tech Lab MTI562 Wk.2

One of the blessings of working at a private school with a parent community that is very supportive of tech investment is that I am able to keep our technology pretty up to date. The downside of that is sometimes the various technologies we use end up having compatibility issues. There are some programs we can’t use until the software developers bring out an up to date version – for example the Scholastic Office Keys which we loved for Office 2007 but do not work for Office 2013, or Ice Cream Truck from Sunburst. For other programs there are workarounds. One of the coding games my students love is Kodu from the Microsoft Fuse Research Labs. We had all sorts of issues running it native under Windows 8, but when we ran the compatibility troubleshooter (right click on the program icon) we were able to run it in Windows 7 mode and it worked just fine. Phew. Here is a screenshot of the fix.

MTI 562 Week 2 E-Book Review

For MTI562 I read 98 Tech Tips from the Classroom. This e-book has some really useful tips and tricks .Although some of the solutions are no longer relevant now that we have Windows 8 & Office 2013 (some of the Alt & Ctrl options don’t work, and some things you don’t need anymore – e.g. you can hide your desktop just by clicking on the Windows key), there were some really useful things in here that I didn’t already know. I will be sure to be teaching my students in the fall – for example that you can just print the highlighted text off a web page using Ctrl+P and the ‘Selection’ option. We have been copying & pasting in word which seems daft now I know better. 

Some of the links need updating I was really excited to see the easy way to make charts but the link was broken - http://smaatechk-3.wikispaces.com/This+Week+in+Tech--Third+Grade. I always tell my students that Microsoft gives you at least 3 ways of doing everything, there isn’t a right or a wrong answer – just find the one that works for you, and if in doubt Right Click, so I was pleased to see that in there! Another useful hint is to truncate the URL if a link is broken to see if you can find what you are looking for on the site. I will be using some of these to make a laminated survival guide as we transition to the teachers bringing their students to the lab without being dependent on me.

Hello

Welcome to my blog. I am the Technology Specialist at Chestnut Hill Academy, a private elementary school in Bellevue, WA, where I have been teaching technology as a standalone subject for the last 9 years. This year I am transitioning to the role of Technology Integration Specialist where I will be helping the core class teachers make better use of the technology in their classrooms. Our intention is that the students will end up learning the same technology skills but in the context of core lessons rather than a seperate technology class. We will most likely still have break out sessions for keyboarding and coding. As part of this transition I have signed up for MTI 562 The Tech Infused Teacher which I hope will help me better support our staff.