Really...

Really, I'm working on my grad school stuff.  (now if I only had access to google sites. :-C )

Creating a Professional Portfolio

These last few weeks I have been attempting to create a professional portfolio.  The main problem that I have been finding is to attempt to try to find artifacts that would best show my growth within the MEIT program.  I wish my original blog had not been deleted, since I had done my best to use the blog as the beginning of my portfolio from the earliest classes.  Se la vie, I will be able to find the artifacts in my Google Docs.  I have been impressed with some of the sites of my classmates.  They are incredibly gifted.  There is a reason that I find that I learn more when I listen to them as well as the professor that is leading the class.

SMART Goals, Vision Statements and Mission Statements

One of the things we did this week was to talk about creating SMART goals.  Specifically, this means that we need to start with our planning for activities with the end results in mind.  SMART is an acronym that stands for: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely.  If a teacher is keeping these key words in mind while planning lessons or activities he/she would be able to make sure that the activities don't attempt to do too many things in too short of a time.

Vision and Mission Statements are important in order to keep the teacher remembering what is important to them.  In the day to day running of a classroom, sometimes the big picture is lost among the plethora of concerns that come up or are places upon us.  On the whole, a vision statement states what the major goals of the teacher are.  For example, my main goal as a teacher is to do whatever I need to do in order to help my students find success while still be an ethical and moral person.  A mission statement is something that gives a brief explanations of some of the steps that he/she is going to do in order to get closer to reaching or to reach the major goals he/she has within the next three to five years.

I have a feeling that creating the Vision and Mission Statements will be something I can do since I know what my goals are.  I just need to put them down "on paper".  Being able to modify a Google Site in order to be able to present my ideas effectively.  For the most part, the Google Sites are nicely customize-able, but sometimes they need tons of work to look good.

The standards that I am using as a basis for my portfolio are the National Educational Technology Standards. I chose these partially due to the fact that they are straightforward, and they align with my goals.  I took a look at the Wisconsin Model Academic Standards for Science, but gauged them as too unwieldy and bulky to use as the basis for my portfolio.  My portfolio (such as it is so far) can be found here.

Beginnings of a Professional Portfolio

This week we were assigned to start looking at what we would need to consider and have in a professional portfolio.  This seems like an immense challenge that I hope to be able to be worthy of.  With the limitations that teaching, coaching, attempting to raise two kids and take care of a disabled wife, while dealing with some new health problems that have sneaked up on me, I am finding that even the best time management plans are not worth the paper they are diagrammed upon.  Something is going to have to give, but I am hoping that it is not going to negatively effect my family or my schooling or my ability to perform my jobs.  However, I have a feeling that I will be able to direct my professional development to best meet my goals if I place these goals someplace visible where I can remind myself of what I want to achieve.

Virtual Schools Legislation in Wisconsin

I understand the Virtual Schools Legislation in Wisconsin and am concerned about the cap on enrollment.  If students who could benefit from an online mode of education are not allowed to pursue their education in this way, how is the cap helping?  As a public school teacher, I might have some reservations for private schools getting public funding, but a public online charter school should be able to get funds as easily as other public schools and easier than private schools.


I understand the Virtual Schools Legislation in Wisconsin and am excited about the fact that parents are not expected to have a DPI license in order to teach their children.  Parents are their first teachers.  If they are not encouraged to support the education of their kids, apathy will soon grow and then you will have some of the problems you find in some of the brick and mortar schools.

Collaborative Groups

I believe the biggest benefit of collaborative groups is that everyone in the group is able to learn from the ideas and thoughts of the other group members.  In other words, collaborative groups can create something greater than the sum of all the group parts could do separately.  Even in the worst of all collaborative groups, all of the students are able to take something away from the experience even if it is "I don't ever want to work with that person again."

Authentic Assessments

While working on this module I had both success and difficulty while doing something new involving authentic assessments.  I found success in the fact that I was able to figure out how to create an assessment that meets the standards that my students are expected to meet as well as well possibly prepare them for future challenges while in the traditional or blended setting.  My difficulties that I found were to be able to differentiate and create an authentic assessment for the pure online class without causing myself a migraine with the logistics and attempting to pay for all the shipping I would need to do.  I guess I am used to classes where I am the sole source of supplies.  If in an online setting students were able to provide their own material for labs and experiments, I am sure this would be a stress that is greatly reduced.

Facilitating an online discussion

This week we were able to choose a topic that we are going to facilitate a small group.  The topic I chose was that of at risk students.  This topic is very important to me since I teach in a district where most of the students I teach might be labeled as at-risk at one time or another in their career .  Hopefully, I will be able to get some more ideas about how to reach some of these kids in order to be able to help attempt to reduce the rate of the students that I teach from dropping out of school.  Even if it means that I make the impression that they will be able to come to me when they are having difficulty, I want to do what I need in order to be able to help the kids of Milwaukee.

This week we were asked to identify synchronous and asynchronous online learning tools that would be appropriate for my targeted online learners.  


There are many different ways that a course could be created as an asynchronous learning environment.  Wiki's, blogs, web pages and applications such as Facebook all have their places for online learning environments.  The applications that I would probably use if I were to create an asynchronous learning environment would be PBWorks, and Google Sites.  PBWorks is a amazingly customizable learning environment that allows for bilateral communication as well as electronic submission and grading of classwork.  Google Sites is nice in the fact that the instructor can not only create a nice site that explains student work and allows for students to submit their work, but due to many customizations of the Google Sites, the administrator can give or limit many of the permissions that students would have on the site.


For synchronized online learning experiences, I have mainly found applications that would be best suited for small groups.  Skype and other free  web conferencing applications like it that I have used, are best suited for small groups of up to 4.  If you go much beyond this number, the amount of lag makes the conference impossible to continue effectively.  The best large group synchronous online learning environment that I have experienced is Elluminate/Blackboard.  I have been part of an online learning experience of over 20 members with little to no audio or video lag.  The ability to use a whiteboard or share desktops truly enhance the learning experience of the students.  For the instructor, having the ability to limit the ability of students to disrupt the class when student input is not needed is a great feature.  Some of the other larger scale online learning environments that I have read about but have not experienced are Red5, Wowza, and offerings from Adobe in the form of Flash Media Server.   

Some Student Work with Web 2.0 Tools

Here is a VoiceThread my students did about Plate Tectonics.

CeDO 550 Week 1

These are some problems I had navigating the course management system and utilizing the discussion boards.  I have been exhausted this week with attempting to do he work I need to do at my school, help my 2 kids at home, work my second job and attempt to keep the house clean since my wife herniated a vertebrae in her neck.  Due to this, I was confused by our new class site and how the work was going to be assigned.  When I checked out the assignments page and the submissions page, I hadn't realized that we needed to click the link in order to get the description of the work.  I am very glad that the contact number for our professor was listed on our class site. Between the phone call and re-watching the recorded session of our "Class 0", I was able to get my work done.  Hopefully I won't have the same problems next week.  

Being SMART with technology

   One thing that we were asked to think about how we would use the applications we have been introduced to over the last year.  Specifically, we were asked to consider the following:

Specific - what exactly will you do?
Measurable - how will you be able to prove it was done?
Attainable - Will you have the resources and time, what might you have to do to make it occur?
Realistic - Make sure it is doable, you certainly can add something to a lesson plan or work item, you caanot get to the moon?
Timely - Assign a timeline - when will this be done by?

Overall, each of these considerations is important to be able to help students be successful in their learning even if you are not using modern technologies to deliver your content.  It is always important for the educator to plan for student activities and learning experiences with the learning expectations in mind.  A salesman that had tried to train me as a salesman once told me, "You only can plan to succeed, if you succeed to plan."  This is as true for education as it is for sales.  If you do not plan with the outcomes you want in mind, there is no way that you will be able to reach them.  This is especially important when attempting to integrate technology into the presentation of information in a classroom.  When attempting to get students to use a new technology, the educator needs to be able teach the students the appropriate way to use the technology.  There is also the fact that the educator needs to be able have enough time to be able to learn the technologies and have enough time to teach the appropriate use of the technologies to the students.  If the teacher fails to plan appropriately, they are doomed to fail in their attempt to integrate the technologies appropriately.

CEdO 535 Week 5

This has been an interesting week.  We have been looking at many different ways to spark our students interest using technology.  Looking through the Web 2.0 sites made me realize just how many applications there are out there that I don't know about and have no clue how to use.  I have always thought that I was technologically savvy, but seeing all of this stuff out on the web, I just know that I am still a babe exploring this new world. 

Google sites are pretty nice.  I have created my own websites before using an html editor, as well as WYSIWYG sites such as GeoCities (before they were taken over by Yahoo).  I am realizing that I have much less time than I have ever had previously in my life to do fun things such as creating a website.  So the WYSIWYG format is pretty nice to be able to create a site quickly.  Here is my site as it is so far.

Eyejot.  The program seems to have uses to be able to enhance learning for students.  For me, there is only one problem.  I have a small phobia about creating videos of myself.  Maybe it is due to the experiences I have had in the past, but I would rather not publish a video that I feel would be ridiculed.  Even though I can think rationally about the fact that not many would ever bother to look it up, there is a small niggling voice in the back of my head that says that if I create a digital video, it will end up (somehow) with either a student or co-worker that has an axe to grind.

Weed 4 of CeDO 535

This week we turned our attention to several different things.  Social Bookmarking, Podcasts and Screencasting, Social Networks and Micro-blogging in the classroom all were discussed.

This is not the first time in this MEIT Cohort progression that we have talked about social bookmarking.  Digg, Diigo, Deli.cio.us and Stumbleupon are all relatively nice ways to be able to share your favorite sites with others. One of the nice things about Digg, Diigo and Stumbleupon is that you are able to login to each and share information with your facebook account.  This way you are able to easily use social networking in conjunction to the social functions of the social bookmarking sites.  Deli.cio.us has just restarted as a social bookmarking site.  There is a blog that details the status of the restart.

Speaking about social networking, I found this picture posted by one of my facebook friends.

Not only can Facebook be used as a way to keep in touch with friends and family, but it can be used specifically to focus on current events or the topics that a classroom is discussing.  The problem with sites such as Facebook, is that many districts block access to sites such as this.  If students do not have access to sites such as this, then educators are not easily able to show them how to use it for not only a social media, but also as a learning tool.  The good/bad thing about districts blocking social media sites is that while it is more difficult for students to misuse these sites during a school day, it is more likely that students will not use them as anything other than a site to connect socially or cause drama that then spills back into the schools.  The other issue is that in many cases, students are still checking their social media sites on their smart phones during the school day even though the use of such phones might also be banned during the school day.  This causes more issue for classroom management for the educators.

Podcasts and Screencasts would be very useful in many situations for education.  In MPS the only problem that I would have with trying to use these media to get messages to my students outside of class is that the population that is able to use a computer outside of school is only about 80% of the students I teach.  There are also students who have internet connected computers at home, but they are locked away in a parents room, inaccessible to the student.  The main way I might be able to use a podcast or screencast as a part of my class is to use them for students who missed classes so that they do not fall behind.  In many cases, students who miss class, not only miss the work for the day, but also the explanation of the work.  For most students, this explanation is the more important of the two components that they missed.  

Micro-blogging is a great way to send out quick information to the students who follow your Twitter account.  For students who follow, they would be reminded of due dates, assessments and other important classroom happenings.  But again, this is only for students who are able to 1) have access to the internet outside of school, and 2) have access to Twitter.

RSS Feeds, Flickr, Creative Commons

    This week we were looking at several different topics.   One of these topics was RSS readers.  The link to my shared items can be seen here. I have a feeling that with tools like RSS readers, teachers will truly be able to move toward being the facilitators of knowledge rather than the "font of knowledge".  For many educators this will be a total paradigm shift where educators will need to be able to modify what they use to teach almost as quickly as new information becomes available.

    We also used learned about Creative Commons licensing.  We were to use what we learned about these licenses to put a usage license on the images we displayed on Flickr.  The pictures that I shared can be found here.