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.

Week 2 in CEDO 535

While searching Wikipedia to check for how accurate the site is, I looked at some things that I know quite a bit about. Two Harbors, Minnesota was one of the items I checked the entry for. I spent several weeks each summer wandering the woods and rivers near this town. During those 30+ years of vacations, I learned a lot about the area by listening to the people who lived there. One of those people was Walter Sve who owned and operated the Split Rock Cabins, where my family usually stayed. Walter was a commercial fisherman and carpenter who augmented his income through the operation of a resort that his son operates today. However, due to pollution of Lake Superior by the taconite mining industry, the commercial fishing industry as well as the fishery of the lake were nearly destroyed. A link to the legal battle to stop the pollution can be found here.  Here is a short video detailing some of the trials and tribulations of commercial fishermen on Lake Superior.

We also were working on mini-blogging (aka using Twitter).  I have a feeling that I might get addicted to this. I hope that it does not overtake other pursuits that I have at this moment though.  But, with currently 0 followers, I guess I won't have to worry about getting a big head by having lots of people wanting to know what I say :).

Editing this Sunday evening ~7pm.  Thanks to Twitter I found some neat new sites we might be able to use.  The first is an image hosting site. http://imgur.com/
The second is an open source security software:http://preyproject.com/
This software allowed a guy to recover his laptop when it was stolen and he had gone out of the country.  Link to that is here: http://storify.com/hawaii/sean-powers-laptop-recovered?awesm=awe.sm_5J8w5&utm_content=tweetdeck&utm_medium=awe.sm-twitter&utm_source=direct-awe.sm

Week 1 CEdO 535

One of the assignments for this first week of class was to look at potential sites to host an educational blog.  Our review of the sites (a minimum of 3) was to be documented and shared by the end of the week.  Some of the sites that were interesting for an educational purpose were: Xanga, Edmodo, 21 Classes, Edublogs, and WordPress.  Each of these sites had attractive features that a classroom teacher should be able to find useable. 

The Highlights

I was floored by the the ability of Edumodo to have assignments and grades for your classes on the site.  This site really seems much like a Moodle type site for running a class and allowing a site that students could use to discuss class topics while not in class. 

Xanga was interesting in the fact that depending on the activity on a certain blog, they were able to get different rankings.  The highest ranked were linked on the homepage of Xanga.  This allows users to see where and what the buzz is.

21 Classes is neat due to the fact that a teacher is able to set up blog sites for their students in a relatively safe environment. 

WordPress is very informative with an extensive user guide to bring a user from "zero-to-hero" with regards to the use of the site.


We've also had the chance to read a bit of Will Richardson's "Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and other powerful Web Tools for Classrooms".   The intro is a good history on the development of the ability to author things on the web.  Things are much more plug and play compared to the start when to do anything, one would need to know how to code what they wanted to show online.  Now, all one has to do to author web material is to sign up on a site.

Identifying and Evaluating Major Data Resources on the Internet

This past week we have had the assignment to investigate and analyze some online data resources that were provided for us as well as find and analyze some resources on our own.  My findings can be found here.  I was surprised by how some online resources that one would think would have their data accessible online did not.  One of these was the National Archives which had broken the link that our professor had given us due to some internal reorganization.  For the most part, if someone was looking for genealogical or census data, he or she would need to either pay for some microfiche to be sent to them, or to travel to a National Archive site for free access.  The National Archive site closest to Milwaukee, WI is in Chicago.  After that, the next closest is in Lancing, Michigan.  I was very surprised to find out that there is no site located in either the capital city of each state or in the major universities located all over the U.S.  However, I did find out that the only reason that this is the reality, is that there is just too much that needs to be stored in the National Archives to be able to digitize it all and maintain it online.  That being said, I am glad there are some enterprising individuals (such as the creators of Ancestry.com and Heritagequest.com) that are doing what they can to make this available for a fee.

Surveys, Analyzing Data and Other Questions

This week, we actually created a survey, solicited responses, and analyzed the data.  We chose to do a survey on who preferred the books and movies of the Lord of the Rings series or the Harry Potter series.  The link to our survey can be found here.  The results can be found here.  We were initially of the mindset that younger people (under 30)  would prefer Harry Potter, and older people (30+) would prefer Lord of the Rings.  One of the reasons we thought of this, is that people who are younger probably have not been exposed to Lord of the Rings, while Harry Potter has been almost universally known among readers.  The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings series should have been more known by those who are older and were exposed to the books and original cartoon movies when they were newer.  Our group found that younger readers preferred Harry Potter, while older readers were more evenly distributed.  Males preferred Lord of the Rings by a margin of 2 to 1.  Females were reversed preferring Harry Potter by a margin of 2 to 1.  One thing that I wish we included were questions about if the survey taker was into role playing games (table top or online), Society of Creative Anachronism or LARPing (Live Action Role Playing).  I have a feeling that that would have been able to give us more information about the two series.  The people I knew had taken the survey and asked about it, the people who were into AD&D, online games, etc. seemed to prefer Lord of the Rings.  This might have to do with the fact that Lord of the Rings is not a book series for a person who has not been introduced to a "hard-core" fantasy series.

Surveys & Gathering Data

One of the things that we were assigned to explore this week is the creation of surveys.  This is something that I am somewhat familiar with since my students created a survey to gauge the thoughts of people about the Budget Repair Bill that was proposed by Governor Scott Walker this spring.  The main thing that I wanted my students to understand is that the data you can get from an experiment or a survey can be severely impacted by bias.  This could be bias that is found in the questions that are asked or the sample that is used to find the answers to your question.  My students, when creating their questions let their bias (against Scott Walker) influence the questions.  The population sample was also tainted due to being done in a school where most people had a natural bias against their pay and benefits being changed to a smaller figure.  So after all of the work my students did, I had them analyze the data.  To no ones surprise, the feelings about the budget bill and Governor Scott Walker were negative.  However, when my students realized that they had biased questions and sample, they understood that the data that they received was not representative of the state of Wisconsin as a whole, but only of one Milwaukee Public Schools middle school.