All done with class presentation

Did my presentation today, it went well, glad to be done.  I thought it was nice that everyone tonight used different tools so that we could learn different ways to present a variety of information.  Everyone did a great job in the class and I am looking forward to seeing more next week.  I will be spending time this week looking at online typing programs to see if we want to switch.  I got my paperwork done foe my license so I am goog until 2017. 

Final paper submitted

I decided if I look at my stuff any more it will drive me crazy.  I redid the design doc to fit the arrangement wanted by Dr. Park and submitted both documents because I felt the layout of the first was better.  I am not a researcher or ever planning on being a researcher so this APA formatting is not for me. I did my bibliography in MLA which is what I teach my students and am familiar with.  My slide show presentation is done and ready to show.  Now I need to write my reflection paper for my license. This past week we had a meeting which talked about management systems for I pads and the positives and negatives of each.  We also talked about consortiums which are working on online programs for all areas of standards taught in MN.  Lacking some meat but checked out the mn history site which has good activities that meet the standards but is lacking the information needed to do the activities which kind of defeats the purpose of full lessons online.

Conferences and book fair.

This week we have our conferences and I run a book fair.  I think I got a majority of my work done for both classes.  I just may make a tweak here and there.  I also have our students ready to go using mackin via.  This is an e book service by mackin books where with certain titles that you buy the entire school can read the book at the same time.  Some of the books even have hot links that take you to more information on the web.  Excited about the fourth big ten gopher win.  Go Gophers!  Heading into Wisconsin on a high note.  Yea alumni band trumpets.  

Last few weeks of class

Photography class over, project done except for a final check.  Spent the last few days working with trying to mesh up mn history curriculum between ecmecc moodle and northern lights.  Wonder if anyone out there has done much with mn history as a free source moodle.

This week I learned how to work with google web pages.  That was new for me.  I finished my pictures for my photography class unless I come up with some new ones so that is done for the quarter.  I think I have my web pages done for the final for my other class but I need to do some work on my design document as google forms would not allow me to phrase the test questions the way I wanted to do that.  It is my week to facilitate for class so I hope that goes well, I can't be in class the entire time next week because we have conferences and a book fair.  I hope to find a way to listen and work with my ipad, my stupid phone probably won't hold a charge long enough for me to listen.  I can always catch up later but this is the week to discuss the stuff we have been doing for the past few weeks.  I did post some reflections of past weeks on my blog for the weeks we were not posting anything if you want to check that out.  Happy Fall.  Go Gophers! Beat Penn State!

Listening to the podcast for class and updating my blog.  Trying to process all this information and determine how I plan to use all this information in my classes.  I am learning how to create new things and this past summer I learned how to do more with presentations.  I don't know yet if I will use podcasts but I do see some uses.  I am glad I was able to post some thoughts about some class topics the past few weeks because we ran out of time to discuss these.  Downside to podcasting, if it is a presentation you don't get the visuals.

Classes are driving me crazy!

Just submitted my paper on an interview.  I was only able to fill two pages with the information given for the assignment. Did anyone else have the same problem?  I am struggling with time management between the amount of work in this class and my other class.  Both classes have the same amount of credits but this class has a lot more work to it. I plan on writing the paper for the final in this class and hope to get a lot done over this long weekend.  

Social networking

Since there is no discussion this week, so I don't forget I am going to post my discussion here so I have a place to refer to.  In my experience with students these are the social skills and competencies I have seen.  First looking back at another part of the article strikes a chord with me.  Families who have access to books, attend concerts, have discussions at dinner, and go to museums develop skills that help kids with school.  Computer use in the one also increase the skills students will have.  Ethics are not inherent the need to be taught be a mentor and via media instruction.  Play, I keep thinking back to Oregon Trail,(previous post) and how we could solve problems while traveling the trail, if we didn't die before the game ended.  Today some of our students play Sumdog which allows them to use math at their level to compete against other students and gain things for their avatars.  Some classes have done the stock market game to understand economics.  I like that the addressed the difference between off task and multitask. Our school is beginning to use google communities to share knowledge.  Students will be using schoology for their communications.  I give the students lessons each year on selecting good sources for research. Our fourth graders use ven diagrams to compare different versions of fairy tales including video versions.  Last year our sixth graders made their own versions of give a mouse a cookie on educreations.  Our fifth graders are giving news reports using a green screen. Rather than creating links on my web page I just maintain bookmarks on a delicious page for students to access.  Reading about the social networking makes me reiterate my wish for facebook and my space.  Since kids are creating profiles anyway and lying about their age to do so I with they would just allow kids to be honest about their age but automatically enable safety measures when someone under a certain age creates a profile.  Our school has a Facebook page for the community to check into.  Media literacy needs to be worked on more in our school, where do we find the time for everything.

       Second questions we had student save their items to a server with a teacher facilitating sharing until we started with google docs a couple of years ago, however due to inappropriate use of email by students teachers still need to facilitate the sharing.  Fourth grade also uses kid blog which also requires teachers to preview comments before posting.

   Third question I would probably use google since that is what many schools are moving to due to cost reasons.

Technology, technology.

A friend of mine put this on her Facebook page and asked for comments.  I used one of the from 7th grade and even into college for projects with a dot matrix printer.

What do you think?

Aargh!,,,,

National pirate day today words express how I am feeling about technology this week. Nwea books a ton of customers and doesn't have the capability to keep up with the volume, then ios7 comes out today and ties up all the bandwidth. It's ridiculous when it takes almost an hour to get 25 out of 60 computers to accept a student to take a test. How can we validate a test when kids are stressed, the teacher is stressed, and others are stressed over just logging in to the system. (Students are also talking because the are impatient.) They told us today we could postpone but how does that affect results when some of the kids had crappy testing conditions and a few others would have better conditions. I hope they get it fixed for spring.

Technology is not always what it is cracked up to be!

After fighting computers with MAP testing all day today and knowing I have eight more days of this if I have any hair left at the end of the week I will be surprised. Fortunately my gophers won this week. Thinking on how I want to approach my mid quarter project. Would like to get a good start before my photography class starts next week. Spent the afternoon helping our kindergarten team get their web pages done. Two are retiring this year so kudos to them for learning some new technology their final year. Talked to one of the teachers I want to interview for my project and she is happy to help. More info about our school we are one to one for grades 6-9 with ipads, we have chrome books and ipads for checkout in both buildings, and three labs in each building. Our older students can Boyd. All our staff are creating web pages with weebly and we are a google school with all forth grade up having their own accounts.

Learning

This summer has been my inaugural trip into online learning. I feel I am pretty good with technology but this has been scary and frustrating at times. Presenting has given classmates issues, thankfully not me. I was so scared I would have tech issues with my final presentation that since half of the students were live in the class I decided to join them that day. I miss not knowing what my classmates look like and the face to face interaction. I think when Mert had three students show up live the last day it was nice he turned the camera on them so we could see that they looked like. Unfortunately they couldn't share their snacks with those of us at home. Classes this way do save me from having to drive ninety minutes each week for class though and my dog can keep me company during class. We have video screens that hook up through the Internet at school and a monitor can manage different locations, maybe face to face would be nice.

554 blog beginning

I am a media specialist in pine city and am taking my technology certificate course. I moved my reviews to the discussion page if you was them here for 554. I am familiar with a lot of Web 2.0 tools but just don't have the time to keep up with absolutely everything. After I took my initial Web 2.0 program in earlier posts in the 23 things on a stick program a few years ago technology is progressing even more. Google wasn't even on the horizon back when I started this. We are now a google school and using weebly for our websites which has restarted my interest in learning more techie stuff.

More Pictures from our trip.

The Peacemaker is 150 feet long and 123 feet high. It was built in 1986-1989. Hometown is Brunswick GA. Built by an Italian family using traditional methods and tropical hardwood in its construction.

The ship in this picture is the Niagara. It is 198 feet long and 118 feet high. Built in 1988 it is part of the Erie Maritime Museum in Pennsylvania. It is used to honor the 1812 war.

Here are some links for more tall ship information. http://www.superiortelegram.com/event/article/id/273478/group/Entertainment/publisher_ID/36/ http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/article/id/273429 http://www.northlandsnewscenter.com/news/local/Tens-of-Thousands-Set-Sail-for-Canal-Park-to-See-2013-Tall-Ships-217025421.html

This is the Denis Sullivan a boat out of Milwaukee WI. The length is 137 feet and the height is 90 feet. The ship was built in 1995-2000.

The Pride of Baltimore is a schooner that is 157 feet long and 107 feet tall. It was built in 1988 as a memorial. The home port is Baltimore MD. The vessel's mission is to recall the "Star Spangled Banner."

This is the tall ship Lynx which is 122 feet long and 94 feet high. It was built in 2001 in Rockport Marine in Maine. The homeport is Newport Beach CA. It can be found cruising North America, the Great Lakes, and Hawaii.

This is the Schooner Zeeto. It is 65 feet long and 38 feet tall. It's home port is Bayfield WI. Built in 1954 it can primarily be found in Lake Superior.

This is the tall ship Sorlandet. It is 210 feet long and 112 feet tall. Built in 1927 it is the oldest full rigged ship still operating out of Kurstiansand Norway. It represented Norway at the 1933 World's Fair. The ship was damaged during World War II and was fully restored by 1948 with the engine added in 1958.

Above is the Schooner Hindu. The length is 79 feet, height is 64 feet. This ship was built in 1925 in Maine with it's home port in Provincetown Massachusetts. It can be found cruising the waters of Florida and Cape Cod. During World War II it patrolled the coast looking for German U-boats.

The ship below is the Coaster II. The length is 58 feet and mast height is 65 feet. Built in 1933 it's home is Marquette Michigan. Sailing area is the great lakes.