After several weeks of creating and revising my curriculum page, I have finally completed my project! What a great feeling it is to have accomplished such a timely, stressful at times, task. I am quite proud of myself for the work I have done and hope you enjoy my curriculum page.
With Kind Regards,
Kim
In my technology for educators class this week I had to create a rubric for my digital storytelling assignment. As I stated in my previous post, “a rubric is a detailed scoring guide for assessment, based on stated criteria” (Shelly, Gunter, & Gunter, p. 396). Rubrics are helpful to students by listing all project criteria in one place. Students know ahead of time (before they begin their project) how they will be evaluated and what needs to be included in their project before it is due. Rubrics also “help students and teachers define the quality of completed assignments” (Shelly, Gunter, & Gunter, p. 407).
For this class we have had rubrics for each and every assignment and I must say, they are quite helpful. I am able to see exactly what it expected of me for each assignment and evaluate my quality of work before it is due to my professor. It is nice to know exactly what needs to be included in each assignment so that when I am ready to turn it in, I know I have met each stated criteria.
Through my module readings this week I learned that there are 2 kinds of rubrics: holistic and analytic. Analytic rubrics provide “levels of performance for each criterion so the teacher can assess student performance on each criterion” (Mueller, 2010, unpaged). Holistic rubrics, on the other hand, assign “a level of performance by assessing performance across multiple criteria as a whole” (Mueller, 2010, unpaged). Analytic rubrics might be used when teachers need to grade a project with several criteria, and holistic rubrics might be used when a quicker assessment can be made (Mueller, 2010). It is really up to each individual teacher and the required assignment, as to which rubric works best. It always comes down to the teacher’s preference as he or she is the one who will be utilizing the rubric. For my digital storytelling rubric we were required to create an analytic rubric.
Since I currently teach kindergarten I can honestly say that I have never created a rubric before. Our kindergarten assessments are more of a checklist-type assessment of either mastering a skill or not yet mastering it. When I first thought about creating a rubric for my digital storytelling assignment I did not really know where to begin. I ultimately decided to use iRubric because the website looked inviting and I thought I would just give it a try and hope for the best. How well did I do with the assignment? I must say it was one of the easier assignments I have done for this technology class. The basic rubric format was laid out for me and all I needed to do was input my criteria. The iRubric website is extremely user friendly and it did not take me very long to create my rubric. I am kind of glad that I wrote down my rubric criteria a few weeks ago so all I really needed to do was type each criteria and its description into each column and row. I do not want to say that this assignment was “easy” for me, but I will say that I did not really have any problems with creating this rubric.
Please take a look at my rubric below and let me know what you think of it. Does it make sense to you? Do you know what the project entails from reading my rubric? Any comments are greatly appreciated!
Rubric: Farm Digital Storytelling Project
With Kind Regards,
Kim
References:
Mueller, J. (2010). Authentic Assessment Toolbox: Rubrics. Retrieved April 10, 2010 from http://jonathan.mueller.faculty.noctrl.edu/toolbox/rubrics.htm#versus
Shelly, G., Gunter, G., & Gunter, R. (2010). Integrating Technology and Classroom Media in the Classroom. Boston: Course Technology.
As a fairly new teacher, only teaching for 5 years, I have not had too many opportunities to evaluate educational technology. In my first classroom the word “technology” was non-existent. I had three computers…really old computers…that only worked when they felt like it. They were really old and really slow, which pretty much made them useless. Every time I tried to put a student on the computer it would stop working. So those computers just collected dust in the back of my classroom. When I moved to a new school, however, I felt like I had won the lottery! I had four computers (that actually worked!), a projector, a document camera, and audio enhancement equipment.
I was in heaven! After acclimating myself to my new technologies, I quickly realized that since I now had all of this amazing equipment, I was expected to use it as much as possible. The projector was amazing, the document camera was incredible, the audio enhancement equipment saved me from raising my voice so often, but the computers were not being used to the best of their ability. At my school there is an educational software program called Successmaker that our students are expected to use every day. While I think that this program has its perks and does a decent job of measuring my student’s reading and math levels, I just wish that we had the freedom to use some other great educational software to support our students’ learning. Since I teach kindergarten the only educational software we use is Successmaker, but I know the older grades have other required software they need to use as well. My students get really bored with the Successmaker program because it keeps repeating the same activities over and over until they are mastered. I feel like sometimes I am forcing my students to do it because that is what they are required to do.
If I were able to choose some new computer programs for my students to use in the classroom, Shelly, Gunter, & Gunter (2010) have some great tips on evaluating educational technology. “To evaluate an item is to determine its value or judge its worth” (p. 392). Through evaluating educational technology, you are essentially looking for technology that is appropriate for a specific grade level and promotes “learning at the correct levels of student ability and academic achievement” (p. 392). When searching for new educational technologies to use in your classroom, there are many places you can go for assistance. School districts and departments of education have software evaluations to view. Some other places you can go to for help include: professional educational organizations, browsing technology catalogs, colleague recommendations, published evaluations of new products, technology conferences, or the web. There are many software evaluations out there to help educators decide when purchasing new educational technologies for the classroom. You just have to use all of your resources and spend some time searching for the right program. New educational programs can be expensive so you want to research as much as possible before purchasing, so that you know you made the right investment in your students’ education. Education World has a great website with educator product evaluations. Since the products are evaluated by educators, I value other educator’s opinions and know they are keeping their student’s interests in mind when evaluating educational technology.
When evaluating software applications, Shelly, Gunter, & Gunter (2010) recommend downloading a free trial from the software company to test out the software. That is a great, inexpensive way to test out potential software for your classroom. At no cost you can evaluate whether the software meets your student’s needs. You can also use a software evaluation rubric to assess a software program. It “provides a number of important evaluation criteria…to help assess the quality of software or other items” (p. 396). Here is an example that I found of a very user-friendly software evaluation rubric for teachers.
Some other factors Shelly, Gunter, & Gunter (2010) recommend you consider when evaluating educational software are: the content, technical support, ability levels, assessment, technical quality, and ease of use. When taking all of these factors into consideration, you will have a better understanding of the program you are evaluating and it will help you decide if it is a program worth purchasing.
The web also provides access to hundreds of thousands of programs and websites to support your students’ learning. Just like with software, websites should also be evaluated before allowing your students to use them. Some things to look for when evaluating websites are: authority (the credibility of the author), affiliation (to schools or organizations), purpose (why was the site created?), objectivity (is it free from bias?), content, learning process, intended audience, currency (is the information up to date?), and the design of the website (Shelly, Gunter, & Gunter, 2010). You can use a web evaluation rubric to assess the value of an educational website. Take a look at this sample rubric for evaluating websites. There are even rubrics for your students to evaluate websites as well!
As a test, I used the web evaluation rubric to assess one of the websites that I used on my curriculum page. How well did I do with that task? I must say, having a rubric as a guide to assessing the website made it a lot easier to decide if the website is appropriate for my students. I wish I would have known about web evaluation rubrics before creating my curriculum page so I would have put more consideration into the sites that I chose. Since I have a few weeks before my curriculum page is officially due, I think I will go back and evaluate each website using the website evaluation rubric to make sure it is a good choice for my students to view as part of their project assignment. I now realize how important evaluating educational technology really is. I am responsible for my students’ safety and education, and when they come into the classroom I need to protect each student and guide him or her toward positive educational experiences.
With kind regards,
Kim
References:
Shelly, G., Gunter, G., & Gunter, R. (2010). Integrating Technology and Classroom Media in the Classroom. Boston: Course Technology.
This week for my technology class I had to create my first wiki ever! What is a wiki, you might ask? According to Shelly, Gunter, & Gunter (2010), a wiki is a “collaborative Web site that allows users to create, add to, modify, or delete the Web site content via their Web browser” (p. 82). Specifically I had to create a curriculum page through a wiki site. A curriculum page is a “teacher-created document containing hyperlinks to teacher-selected Web sites that assist in teaching content-specific standards and objectives” (Shelly, Gunter, & Gunter, 2010, p. 162).
Curriculum pages are safe for your students to use because they are created by you. Only age-appropriate, safe web sites are put on your curriculum page to enhance learning. An advantage of creating a curriculum page for your students is that they will save a lot of time searching for a specific topic when you have created links to all necessary sites they may need (Shelly, Gunter, & Gunter, 2010). When I hear the word “time saver” my eyes definitely open up a little wider. There is never enough time in a school day and if we can save our students some time, they will be thankful for it in the long run.
So how well did I do with my task of creating a curriculum page? I’m not going to lie…I stopped keeping track of how many hours I’d spent on the curriculum page after I got to around seven or eight hours. I am not the most technologically-smart person and wikis are completely new to me so it took me a while to get used to the format. I have a low tolerance for patience and my wiki was definitely pushing my buttons every so often…but I stuck with it!
I decided to set up an account with wikispaces because it looked like a user friendly site. The first thing that I did was go to the help section and watch all of the tutorials about how to use the site. Thank goodness for tutorials! After watching all of the tutorials I played around a little bit with the editing functions to familiarize myself with its contents. I decided to create my wiki one step at a time. I refer to it as baby steps. First I figured out the title of my curriculum page, then I added some pictures to make it more visually appealing, and then it was time to begin adding the content to my wiki. That was the hardest part. I knew that the subject of my curriculum page was going to be farm animals, but I really didn’t know where to begin.
I found the Webquest template to be the perfect tool to get me started on my curriculum page. It gave me an order and some kind of structure to follow as I created my curriculum page. As soon as I had that Webquest template in my hand the content came along slowly, but surely.
For me the hardest part was adding the pictures to my wiki. For example, I wanted a picture to go to the right, and it went to the left, messing up my content. I got extremely frustrated at times and just had to walk away from the computer for a while to clear my head. After a lot of trial and error, I started to feel more comfortable with my wiki and I was really getting the hang of it. Even though I spent many hours laboring over my wiki, it is not done yet. However, I have a great start to what I think is going to be a great curriculum page!
When my curriculum page is finished and ready to be used in the classroom, I am really excited to see how my kindergarteners and their 4th grade reading buddies will do with the assignment. The curriculum page will serve as an alternative assessment that correlates with our reading unit on farm animals. I am asking each group to choose a farm animal from my curriculum page and create a digital story using PowerPoint over a few months’ time since we only meet with our reading buddies once a week. When everybody’s digital stories are complete, they will show their story to the whole group using my computer and classroom projector.
Will the project go off smoothly without a hitch? Do lessons ever turn out to be a disaster? Since I am new to curriculum pages it is going to be a trial and error process. If some bumps in the road occur along the way, at least I now have background knowledge on wikis and curriculum pages and will hopefully be able to fix the problems as they arise. Nobody is perfect and that is what I tell my students almost every day.
Would you like to preview my curriculum page? It is still in the rough draft stage but I would LOVE for you to take a look at it and give me some feedback on how I did and what I can improve. Thanks for reading!
With kind regards,
Kim
References:
Shelly, G., Gunter, G., & Gunter, R. (2010). Integrating technology and classroom media in the classroom. Boston: Course Technology.
Digital storytelling is becoming the new generation of storytelling. With the advancement of technology, a one-dimensional story can now be told in a two-dimensional way. Please enjoy my power point presentation below of the benefits of digital storytelling in the classroom.
I decided to do my reflection as a power point because I am very familiar with how to create power points and am quite comfortable using the program. I think I did quite well with the assignment because of my knowledge of power point. I embedded my presentation through Slideshare and found its website very user-friendly and easy to understand. I was really impressed at how simple it was to upload my power point and embed it onto my blog. I definitely recommend Slideshare for those of you who want a simple, easy to use program to embed your power point presentations. I was worried that it would take me hours to figure out how to embed my power point, but instead it literally took me minutes. What a great timesaver! I will definitely be using this program again for future projects.
With kind regards,
Kim
What is my online identity? To begin with I went to the Online Identity Calculator to see what they had to say. What were the results? I am digitally dabbling. My first reaction was “Wow! I’m dabbling! Is that good or bad?” It turns out that there is not a lot of online information about me right now and I need to “beef up the amount of on-brand information.”
As I reflect on this week’s tasks for my “Fundamentals of Technology for Educators” class, it really opened up my eyes and made me realize that I need more of an online identity. I have virtually no web presence on the internet right now, except for my blog, and am in need of expanding that identity in other ways. I read about how to create my online identity and looked at some people’s blogs to see how they made their identity known. This blog is my first step but I know that there needs to be more.
As an educator I believe that my online identity should consist of using technology to enhance my student’s learning. As a kindergarten teacher I think the best way to enhance my identity would be through a class web page. I can communicate with parents, which is extremely important, but can also use my web page to provide information and extension activities for my students that correlate with the themes we learn about throughout the school year. I do not currently have a class website, but am looking forward to creating one in the near future.
Shelly, Gunter, & Gunter (2010) stated how easy it is to create your own web page today. The web development programs available are very user-friendly and easy to follow, which means even those who are not very knowledgeable with technology can learn how to create a web page. A lot of web sites are also free to users, which is a huge incentive. There are also some tips to follow when creating web pages such as: make your web page easy to read, easy to navigate, make sure it is well organized with a consistent layout, it should be easy to locate, and web pages should be quick to download. I will definitely use these tips when creating my class web page.
I think the reason my online identity is currently so “dabbling,” is because I have been afraid to post my personal information on the web for millions of people to potentially see. That thought always concerned me and I have tried to keep my life private from the internet. Solove (2008) stated that the internet has become a “global village.” When personal information is sent over the internet, it is available for the entire internet population to potentially view. The problem that ensues is that sometimes false information is posted for the world to see and those people affected by that information are vulnerable. People are accountable for their own actions and that defines their reputation, but what about when others violate somebody’s actions online without their permission? Who is accountable now? Yes some people want their information to be out there, but we should have control over our own online information. Solove (2008) said it best we he said that “even if you aren’t exhibiting your private life online, it may still wind up being exposed by somebody else” (p. 40). That quote really inspired me to decide to take my own actions on creating my online identity.
My online identity is what I make of it. If I want other people to know who I am, I would rather they hear about it from me than through others. I think what people say about themselves is more powerful than what others say about them. You should be proud to show off who you are and to give a voice to that “global village” out there.
With kind regards,
Kim
References:
Shelly,G., Gunter, G., & Gunter, R. (2010). Integrating technology and classroom media in the classroom. Boston: Course Technology.
Solove, D. (2008). The future of reputation: gossip, rumor, and privacy on the internet. New Haven: Yale University Press.
As a current kindergarten teacher, I am always looking for ways to make my lessons more fun and interesting for my students. Five- and six-year olds have a short attention span (as you fellow parents and teachers may know) and I struggle with keeping my students involved and engaged at all times. Sometimes it is quite hard to teach when my students are rolling around on the floor or mindlessly staring at a poster when I am trying to get my point across. I know they are just “babies” and sometimes cannot help losing their attention, but I still want the best for my students and want them to enjoy their time in kindergarten.
I am going on teaching my fifth year of kindergarten. It is funny, but when I was student teaching I always said to myself that “kindergarten is the one grade that I never want to teach!” and here I am–loving every minute of it and picturing myself staying in kindergarten for many years to come. I enjoy teaching the little ones and in my mind I will always be a “kid at heart.”
With all of the pressure put upon us (educators) to raise test scores, I am always reflecting upon my lessons and wondering what I could do differently to reach all my students and improve their academic knowledge. With the advancement of technology and unlimited resources on the internet, I am a constant online searcher. In kindergarten we have weekly alpha-friends to help us learn the letters of the alphabet. We also have weekly themes that coordinate with events going on each month of the year. For instance, in the past few weeks we have been learning about winter and polar animals. While there are several veteran teachers at my school to go to for help with activities for each theme, I also enjoy researching online to get ideas from educators around the world. Though I am not yet a veteran at teaching, I always share my new ideas and activities that I find online with my co-workers, as teaching is also about collaboration.
In the past few days I have done a lot of online research for my “Fundamentals of Technology for Educators” class. I have looked at my state’s department of education site, as well as my school district’s website. I find both websites to be very useful for parents, teachers, and the community. There is a wealth of information available to inform the user about our state and district policies. On a more current note, I was very interested in reading the information about the Race to the Top competition to receive federal grant money from the government. This is a heated topic right now and I was able to catch up on the facts of the grant.
I have also visited many educational websites with an unlimited amount of resources. One of the more interesting sites I found was the Diigo in Education site (http://groups.diigo.com/group/diigoineducation). At this site educators can post their blogs or informational websites to share with others. There are thousands of sites available to preview and I already bookmarked a few interesting sites.
What have I concluded from all of this online research? There is A LOT of information out there! You could spend hours online researching just one single topic. I know…because I have done it in the past! It gets to be a little overwhelming at times and sometimes I wonder where to start. A lot of times, too, I will be researching one topic and then I find something else interesting and veer off to that topic. I don’t consider myself to be ADD, but that is how I feel sometimes when I get distracted and off topic when researching online. Maybe I have online ADD!
I have recently learned some new tips on how to narrow down my searches and hope they will be useful to me in the future. I also decided to join www.diigo.com to help me organize and bookmark useful sites. This program is completely foreign to me but I am up for the challenge. With this technology class I have decided to embrace technology and go out of my comfort zone. If it is for the benefit of my students then I will do it…even if I get frustrated at times. Teaching is a learning process, not only for the students, but for the teachers as well.
Blogging is completely new to me too so I hope you enjoyed my first “official blog!”
With kind regards,
Kim
P.S. I found this great video on You Tube while searching the Diigo in Education website. It is entitled “If You Give a Teacher a Mouse.” It shows how important technology is in today’s world, particularly for teachers and students. Check it out! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9tNGqhYrqk&feature=related
Kim Landman's Blog 