Bunday V EDU590: 1989 was a very interesting year!

Bunday V EDU590: 1989 was a very interesting year!

I enjoyed reading your blog. Yes, we have come a long way since we were first introduced to computers. My first Internet experience at home was on a Gateway. I resisted getting the Internet; I didn't think I would ever use it! Now where would I be without it!?!

I also enjoyed your comments about the class. I, too, was glad to see everyone again and to see the presentations. I am really glad that I started this program; it has been since the early 90's that I have taken a class for credit. This is a whole new experience for me! J. Hale

Friday Night

I am still working on my paper. It is almost done, but I still have to add a couple of things and put on the finishing touches. I still have sites that I would like to check out. However, I have a bag full of papers that need to be corrected as well. Oh, the life of an English teacher! Essays are fun to read, but they are very time consuming, too.

I wish that Michigan were not in such dire states financially. It would be so good for education for students to have laptops. However, I know that students should also learn to do things without technology. I think there must be a happy medium for this. I don't think that technology will replace the face-to-face relationship with teachers. I think that is important to0. I wish I had a crystal ball to see what the future has in store for education.

As you can tell, I am just having random thoughts tonight. I think the cold has frozen my brain or something. Where did autumn go? She is supposed to be with us a while longer!

Our student computers at school have been really slow, but I can't understand why those are slower than others. One student was trying to log in, and it took five or ten minutes to get to his window. He also had trouble e-mailing from the school's computer. I have one computer in my room that the students can use to get their material from the server. The other computers (the e-Macs) in my room are free-standing and not on the server. Those are a little faster, but the students can't retrieve their work on those. I don't want them on the server because I want to always be able to access the yearbook material. I don't need the Internet for that. Besides, we can't just put things on the server; the tech person has to. I like to be able to do my own because my needs are different from everyone else's because of the publications class.

My wireless mouse is working very well for my presentations in my classroom. Now I think I would like to have a remote with an infrared pointer. I will have to look into that.

Wimba Classroom

Tonight several of us met again for the Wimba classroom experience. I liked the idea of being able to present a PowerPoint along with the video. Through this class, my mind has been opened to the possibilities. I can't say enough how much I have seen education change since I started teaching! I am glad that I am still here to experience the way it is going!

I need to do some more work on my paper. I just used Jonesville's part of the survey. I had better go back and look at some of the other schools to make a comparison. The paper has been hard to write because I have learned so much, but I still need to use some of the things that I learned to fully appreciate them. Putting the ideas into practice will be the real test of my learning!

Again, I want to say thank you to Central for offering this program, to Mr. Umpstead for providing me with a good first-experience in the Educational Technology Master's Program, and to my fellow classmates for giving me valuable lessons!

Document Submission

Well, I did it. I sent my lessons with and without technology and my KeyNote presentation to Mr. Umpstead via the BlackBoard. I also sent my rubric when I sent my lesson with technology. I hope my KeyNote can be opened! If not, I can try to resend it in QuickTime or something. I am now in a state of wondering if everything went through okay. This is a whole new experience to me.

I am still working on the paper. I checked everyone's blog a few minutes ago for inspiration, but I had already read the entries. My mind is swimming with so much information. I don't know in which direction to go. Where is that muse when I need her! She saw a clip on TV about Bora Bora; maybe that is where she is!

I just know that education has come a long way since I was in high school. I am glad we know longer use manual typewriters! My fingers would get sore from hitting the keys so hard! I also wonder what the next advances will be that will make what we are doing now obsolete. I am glad that I have lived in both the non-digital age and the digital age.

I still haven't graded the essays. Today I worked on the paper. I also took some time to almost finish a knitted blanket for my soon-to-arrive granddaughter. I find that knitting helps me to relax. Now I think I will put the dog out for a little run, let her in, and then go to bed. I will work some more on the paper tomorrow when my head is clearer! I advise my students that once they have written something, they should put it away and go back to it later. We can usually make better evaluations of our writing when we are fresh!

Presentations

Thank you, fellow classmates and Mr. Umpstead, for last night's class. I really enjoyed the presentations, and I have written down so many websites that I want to explore. Even though we all teach in different areas, I was able to take something away from each of the presentations.

I was exhausted when I arrived home, though (between 11:15 and 11:30)! I didn't even look at a computer until this evening! I took some time for me and was able to see all four grandkids today. One lives near me so I dropped in to see her, and then I took a trip to K-zoo. I took my older daughter and her family out to lunch. Grandbaby #5 is due to arrive towards the end of the month, but she could arrive at any time. Family is very important to me.

Now I have to finish my paper, which is on Sunday's agenda. I also have to begin correcting all of those essays! That is on the agenda after I get my paper done!

I have been thinking about the survey that I gave my students about the project. I should have added something so they could explain their answers. For instance, what could I have done to make the KeyNote presentations more helpful, or why the student didn't believe they were helpful. I know that feedback for the students' work is important, but I don't think they realize that their feedback to the teacher can be important, too. I am curious to ask the two students who thought the non-technology writing was easier what made it easier.

The main message of this blog, though, is that I thought everyone did well last night, and I learned a lot (and have been learning a lot through the blogs) from all of you. I am looking forward to "seeing" everyone Tuesday night in the virtual classroom and again later in October in the second class!

Mouse/Clicker

I can't remember whose blog I read about using a wireless mouse as a clicker. But thank you, thank you, thank you! I knew that I had a wireless mouse with my earlier Mac, but I had never connected it to my newer Mac. When I am using a KeyNote presentation in school, I have to stand near the computer, or walk back to it, and tap the spacebar to move to the next item on the slide or to move to a new slide. Wow! I can now move to the next item with the mouse! How cool is that? (It doesn't take much to excite me!)

I surveyed my students today (the ones who had completed everything) to get their reactions to what we had accomplished. I was very happy with the results. I will still have the students who have been absent take the survey, but of the 53 who completed everything, 51 said the method of writing was easier for them with technology; only 2 said it was easier without. Only 44 thought the KeyNote presentations were helpful. I also liked their comments. Even though they have taken the Business Tech class because it is required for freshmen, I had taught them some things about Word that they had never learned. Many of them liked the two places I gave them for word choice changes: the thesaurus on Word itself and www.virtualthesaurus.com. They also began to look at their sentence structure and whether or not they were writing in active voice. If they were writing in passive voice, they tried to change the sentence to the active voice.

Overall, I was please with what has transpired over the past few days! Can I still improve what I did? You bet; there is always room for improvement! Now the fun/unfun work comes. I have to read and evaluate all of the writings! I enjoy reading what they write, but it takes a very long time. I can't even begin that until I get everything completed for this class.

I am excited. My eyes have been completely opened to the possibilities. I am an old-fashioned, back-to-basics teacher who also wants to incorporate new ways for the students to learn and to become successful at the next level.

Thank you, Central, for having this program. Thank you, Mr. Umpstead, for awakening my drive to try new things, and thank you, fellow classmates, for your help through e-mails and blogs. I am looking forward to seeing your presentations Friday night. I just hope that I did mine correctly. I, more or less, just explained what I did in the lesson. I hope it will be okay. I also hope that my paper isn't too disjointed!

Have a good evening! I will see all of you Friday night!

Conference Class

I really enjoyed the conference class tonight. It was good to speak to others about the class.

I had just come from a presentation at our school by a group of students who had gone through the Natural Helpers training for the past three days. One of the topics that was addressed was cyberbullying. I picked up a copy of the material about the Natural Helpers program that was given to the audience. I am anxious to read what it says about that topic.

I also found my neatoday that was mentioned in someone's blog. I haven't read it yet, but the comments on the blog intrigued me to find the magazine so that I could read the article: "What is Literacy in the Digital Age?"

If anyone wants to exchange papers with me, I am more than willing. However, I don't think mine will be completed until at least Sunday night. Thank you, Mr. Umpstead, for giving us an extension. I have tried to lighten my evening load for schoolwork, but it is happening as much as I wish it would. I am always under a little pressure with the yearbook. I love doing it, but we are completely financially responsible for its publication and any equipment that we have (cameras, computers, programs, etc.). That means earning around $16,000 this year through ads, sales, and a fundraiser. We have to raise the money at the beginning of the year so that we know how much we have to work with. That is all happening now! When we get to the actual production of the book on the computers, I get quite excited with the students' creativity and their excitement when they see their final pages. This will be my 30th book. I have come a long way from 3-R and 3-C forms and a typewriter! Through this class and two PhotoShop morning classes that I recently took, I think I can expose the students to even more things that they can do with the computers.

I think I will go read that article after I watch the YouTube link that Brian (I think it was Brian) put on the conference class notes about Google Docs. I was shown them a while ago, but I haven't used them myself. I need some practice with those. I also need to look at the survey results. Hopefully, I will be able to figure out how to make a graphic of these!

The Continuing Saga...

I had to add another blog about my fifth hour today. Every day we do MUG (Mechanics, Usage, Grammar) sentences as mini-lessons. I started doing these as KeyNote presentations last year instead of on the overhead the way I had been doing these for years. By using KeyNote, I can then put up the corrected sentence so that they can see what it looks like instead of just listening to the corrections. One of today's sentences had to do with the city of Ur, a city found in the Bible. The city name was not capitalized so it looked like ur. We go through the sentences together, making the corrections as we go. When we got to that part of the sentence, someone said, "Ur is written incorrectly. It should be you are or the contraction you're." (If the student had looked at the whole sentence, he/she would have realized that answer was wrong.) It dawned on me that when some of the students saw ur, they automatically viewed it as text writing. I had to chuckle at that. Times certainly have changed. I have done these sentences for years, but that was the first time anyone looked at "ur" that way. Now the question is will this group or future groups be able to go from one type of writing to another easily, or will they just want to use text messaging because it is easier for them.

The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men...

I was all set to present the technology part of my lesson today to my first hour. I had tried this on my husband's PC at home to make sure the tools were there. I thought that was smart thinking on my part because I already knew that everything worked on the Mac. The tools were on Word on my husband's computer. I was ready for my class!

They finished typing their essays on Word in our computer lab. I was ready for my "Tools" lesson. The first part worked okay. I was explaining the spelling and grammar feature, which I knew that the students knew. However, when I said to pull down the Tools menu, they couldn't. At school, we have a different version of Word. Not to panic, I went over to a computer to see what was going on. In the meantime, a student said to click on Review to get to spelling and grammar. Worked like a charm. New problem: When I told them to click the option button in the dialogue box, any student who had already done the spelling and grammar check couldn't get to it. I told them to type a word incorrectly in their document and then try again. Viola! That worked. I had them check the "Show Readability Statistics" box in the dialogue box and then click okay. Word did the spelling and grammar check and then brought up the readability box. Students were surprised when it said 4.5, 5.2, or something like that indicating the reading level of their writing. Originally, I had in the directions to look at word choice, sentence structure and variety, grammar, etc., to make improvements so that the readability level would be 10. I did lower that to at least between 8 and 10. I gave them a website to check grammar questions and a website for a virtual thesaurus in addition to Word's thesaurus. That worked okay, too. Next problem: I wanted them to use the Auto Summarize button, which on the old program was under Tools. I thought this would be great to show them what the computer picked out as the main ideas. They didn't have that function on the computer. I am thinking to myself, "Why would that be removed from Word because it is such a good idea?" We tried to find it, but the hour ended before we could. I would conclude that first hour was not as successful as I had hoped it would be.

Second hour I am ready to try this again. While the students were finishing their essays, I tried to find the answer to the Auto Summarize question; however, the only PC left in the room for me to work on wouldn't let me into the system for whatever reason. I saw that a girl had finished her essay and was waiting. I asked if I could experiment on her computer. I found what I was looking for and figured out how to add it to their Word pages. When people had completed their typing, I gave them the directions to add the Auto Summarize feature, and then I went on with my "Tools" lesson. I felt much more successful with second hour. Now I just have to do the presentation for my fifth hour class and redo the lesson for my first hour so that they can do the next step.

I also had the most interesting discussion with my second hour class about blocked sites. They assured me that if I wanted to get to any blocked site, they could get me there. Yes, it is true that students know more about technology than some of the teachers! My question to them, though, was why did they think that Facebook, a social network, was blocked, but Twitter, another social network, was not blocked. One answer they gave was that it was too new or that the blockers didn't know yet that students were twittering. I should call our ISD to see if I can get an answer. But I make no promises to do that and actually get an answer. I just thought it was interesting.

I don't go to many sites at school through our school's server. I mainly use the school's e-mail site and Skyward for attendance. Today my third-hour students are out selling yearbook ads so I have a few minutes to work on this. I am glad that it worked out this way so that I could write about my earlier two hours while it was still fresh in my head. I am not sure when my students will return because at 11 we went on a lockdown, and there is a police dog in the halls. I am not sure if this is a scheduled practice or the real thing. My students left at 10:45 and are supposed to return between 11:30 and 11:44. It is now 11:26, and we are still in the lockdown. This has been an interesting day so far; I want what fourth and fifth hours will bring!

Today's Lesson

Today I took my students to the computer lab. In partners, they proofread their previously written rough drafts the old-fashioned way! Next, I had them type their essays in Word. Tomorrow, I am going to show them some neat Word Tools that I didn't know how to use until I read our textbook. I am looking forward to this.

During my prep period a student came to ask me a question about Twitter because he thought I would know. However, I told him that I had no clue about Twitter, and I didn't see Twitter, tweeting in my near future! Then I asked him if he could get Twitter here at school. He said that he could. My question is why wouldn't the powers that be block Twitter when the powers that be block FaceBook. What am I missing? Aren't both of these examples of social networking?

One of my classes can't get into the computer lab tomorrow because the library labs are both taken. We have another lab upstairs, and I really only need it for Word; however, another teacher told me that we can't print from the upstairs lab even though she has asked the tech. director to make printing available for this small lab. The tech director won't set it up because he thinks we don't need it up here. He teaches in another building for half the day. What does he know about what we do or don't need. He has never asked us. Again, I think I am missing something. Wouldn't you think that the teachers in a building might know what they need for their classes?

Oh, how I would love to have a mobile Mac lab for my classroom so that each of my students could use a computer at the same time. Oh, the things that we could do! (I would have to learn to do them more proficiently first!)

Well, it is off to do some more research for my paper. I am looking forward to getting the survey results. I hope more of my teachers took the survey so that I have an accurate feel for my district. The countdown to Friday is on!

Kudos

Kudos to Brian and Ruth for putting the 20 questions together for us. Thanks to to everyone who went through the list of class-submitted questions and chose their top 20. I tried to coordinate just three of those to see which ones matched each other, and that was hard enough. I really appreciate what Ruth did for us. Brian, you were the organizer and the solution-go-to man. I am anxious to see how the survey turned out. I will do my best to figure out how to put this into a graph form! At my age, I am still have all of these firsts! This is my first blog, this is my first on-line survey, etc. Although I feel somewhat frustrated/overwhelmed, I am really glad that I am learning these things, and I am really glad that I am getting to know all of you a little bit. By the time we are done with this program in 2011, I am sure that we will know each other well.

EDU 590 Assignments

I have been working almost all day on the assignments for the class. I have my lesson plan done, but I have a feeling I didn't do it correctly. I have one lesson plan that incorporates writing without the use of technology and with the use of technology. I went to rubistar.4teachers.org and found a rubric that fit my needs for the writing assignment. I also created a new KeyNote for the explanation about how to use the Tools in Word to help with the revising/editing/evaluating phase of the writing process. I started my presentation slides. I recently took two PhotoShop classes from our local community college. (Actually, one was the day after our first class, and the other was the next Saturday.) I was able to use a couple of the things that I learned there for my introductory slide picture. I will also be able to use what I learned there with my publications class.

I did take a break to go to Wal-Mart. My watch battery had died a couple of days ago, and I couldn't stand it any more; I needed the watch on my arm, not my cell phone clock! When I was there, I saw a fellow teacher from the elementary school. She said that she had taken the survey for me! Yea! I know there will be at least two from our school!

I came back home after grabbing a bite to eat at my very gracious daughter's house. We knew that she had some leftovers and wouldn't mind a couple of drop-ins! Kristyn, you are the best! Our son-in-law was on call and had been called out to a home. He is a CPS worker. It probably is not good that he gets called out on a Sunday night. His is a very tough job. We stayed long enough to eat and be entertained for a few minutes by our almost 20-month-old granddaughter. That put a smile on my face, and I was off to "play" on the computer some more.

I am exhausted, and my head is spinning. I have three tech plans on my table to review. I have the tech standards. I tried to print the English standards, but only part of it would print even though I have new ink cartridges in my printer. Very strange! When technology works, it is great, but when it doesn't, it is very frustrating! I also have the two rubrics for our assignments out to see if I have things started correctly. How many days are left again? I will not panic; I will not panic....

Teacher In-Service

We had an in-service for our county last week covering a couple of topics. One speaker talked about giving our clients quality and what that meant. The other discussed the inspired teacher. Both gave their presentations with PowerPoints. One tried to show a clip from a video but had some tech trouble before it actually worked. That reminded me of a couple of times in the classroom and having to quickly improvise!

I also had the opportunity to discuss interactive whiteboards with some teachers from a district that recently received several of these for their classrooms. The teachers who had received them stayed in their home district to learn to use them. I am intrigued by their concept. Quizzes can be put on the screen and each student has a clicker. The students click the answer they choose and it is recorded automatically for the teacher. I think the program also gathers information about which questions the students had the most difficulty with so that the teacher can key in on those areas. I am anxious to learn more about these after the teachers have had more time to work with them.

Education has changed a great deal since I began teaching in the 60's! I think I have done an adequate job of keeping up, but things are progressing even faster now. This new era excites me very much. (It can also frustrate, too!) So much to learn and so little time to learn it!

My students wrote a rough draft last week after having gone through the steps of brainstorming, deciding a thesis statment, organizing either formally with an outline or informally with clustering or listing, and then writing the rough draft. Next I will take them to the computer lab, where they will type their final drafts. Then I plan to have them use some of the tools in Word to tweak their writing. I plan to also discuss with them the two ways of writing: one with technology and one without technology. However, I don't want them to become dependent on the technology because there will be times that they can't use technology for their writing; they still need to know how to write and think manually!

Thanks, Sara

I just read an article from Edutopia that was suggested by Sara. The article was called "The Maine Event: Laptops On Every Desktop." Laptops were given to all middle-school students in Maine. It sounds as though Maine has had a lot of success with this program. Oh, the things we could do if we had the resources!

I liked how the school could given learning practical applications that could also be used in the communities and how location played a part in what the students might study.

I am from a rural area, and many of the students aren't exposed to much outside of our area, but with technology we could go on virtual field trips. The students could be exposed to so much. The use of videos/movies would also encourage their creativity, which sometimes gets lost in high schools.

I agree that writing becomes so much easier on a word processor. Today my students took a writing test that is going to be used by a research company. By the end of the hour, their hands were so tired from writing. During the hour, the pencils kept breaking (they had to use #2 pencils). I know the students weren't just breaking them either because I had sharpened the pencils the night before, and I had to sharpen all 72 pencils in the box to get about 20 that were somewhat decent. I am not sure where the school bought these pencils, but I definitely would not recommend them. Monday I am taking them to the computer lab to do a writing assignment, and I know that the students will find it easier, and I am willing to bet that they will do better on this assignment, too. I will be using some of the suggestions that were in our textbook.

I also agree comment in the article about the downside of the laptops. The students won't have them when they go into high school, which means they will have to revert to the old ways of doing things. I think that will really frustrate them!

I will also say, though, that giving students laptops does make me a little nervous. Our students are given calculators for some of the advanced math classes, and I have had several either dropped in my room or left in my room. I know that this has happened in other classrooms, too. I would hope that the students in my school would take care of laptops the way that the students in Maine took care of theirs.

But I think I would be in heaven if all of my students had laptops, preferably Macs, and we wouldn't have to rely on the computer lab being available for our use. I have a few Macs in my room for my publications students, but I don't have enough for a regular English class.