Exploration of Online Portfolios

I have spent this week exploring various educational online portfolios. At first, I had a hard time finding relevant portfolios for my particular area, but I tried various search terms to come up with some great examples. The best examples that I found were when I used the following search term: "education portfolio graduate examples" (not in quotation marks). The University of Missouri is the first result that you get and it has a handful of great examples.

I really enjoyed Connie Capaldo's portfolio. Not only was it thorough, containing standards, course descriptions and reflections, but the artifacts were linked by standards and by class. She also included a resume and her philosophy and her navigation and site appearance were excellent. I really enjoyed that she added some personal flair in her design, making hers stand out from the rest.

I also read about Googlios, in anticipation of creating our portfolios. I especially found the Getting Started section helpful in picturing the process and outcome for this project. (image from: http://sites.google.com/site/googlioproject/)

I have started my shell for my portfolio frankly because I'm really excited about it. Here's what I've got so far. I'm still figuring out how I want it to look design-wise. I want it to be unique but professional. This is a fine line to tread on. I'm sure John will guide us through this, though, so I'm not worried.

550 Final Post

I forgot to post last week :(


I'm sitting in my hotel room at the TIES conference in Minneapolis as I type this. I am attending this conference to keep abreast of 21st Century skills, how to help students develop them, and to add to my PLN. I am working towards shifting the lessons that were handed down to me at the K-5 level to 21st century skills. Right now they are somewhat aligned with the WI state Tech standards, but those are old and I feel as though they behind the times. They focus on students doing specific tasks rather than becoming critical thinkers and problem solvers, which is what we need for them to flourish as adults. I think that this shift will be difficult mainly because I'm not quite sure how to get the rest of our team on board. As we move into the second decade of the 21st century, it's imperative that we are teaching students in a way that is effective. Online education seems to be a promising way to engage students and meet their needs while giving them the skills they will need to be a productive member of our global society.

I made this tagxedo about 21 century skills, enjoy!

550 Week 4

In reflecting on my teaching experiences to date, I would say that the proportion of teacher centered versus student centered lessons has been mainly student-centered. I teach technology so it makes no sense to me to stand at the front of the room and lecture. I do have small group discussions where I demonstrate new software, but for the most part the kids come in and get right to work on a project even in Kindergarten.

The rubric I created for my lesson clearly defined expectations and scoring for the lesson so that my students could focus their energy on what needed to be included in their project. I find that rubrics bring clarity to projects. Students can see "the whole picture" and the little stops along the way. It's a great way to map out the course of a project and provide students with the knowledge of exactly what you are expecting of them.

I really enjoyed teaching on Monday. It was so much fun. I love the online environment. I have always been a facilitator so this came naturally to me. I do hope to teach online and this experience showed me that with planning and a good rapport with students, it is a fully attainable goal for me. Now I just need to revamp my resume ;)

550 Week 3

I found creating both the synchronous and asynchronous pieces to be fairly simple, however, we'll see how I feel after I have to actually faciliate them. I use rubrics for all of my projects with my students, so that was not all that challenging for me either. I'm going to pop into the room early tomorrow to set up the quiz I am giving as my initial intro. Nothing else really to say except keep your fingers crossed ;)

CEDO 550 Week 2

Two asynchronous online learning tools that I think would appropriate to use with K-5th graders would be Screenr and Wikipages. Screenr would be great for making screen casts showing processes on the computer. I think a great project that I could do this year is have my fifth graders create screen casts of how to do different tasks on the computer, like create a folder or bold a word, and then use those to teach the younger students how to do those things. Wikipages would be great for having a collaborative working environment between the students and the teacher. I have a large group project that I do in fourth grade and it would be interesting to have them working on the computer activities online, synchronously, using a wikipage.

Two synchronous online learning tools that I think would be appropriate for K-5th would be Google Docs and Google Chat. Google Docs could be used to create collaborative projects in real time. Google Chat could be used to communicate while working in Google Docs either through chat or through the video service.

Four different activates that I might do with my elementary school students include:

Multimedia presentations- Prezi or Animoto

Story Writing - Storybird

Spreadsheet activity- Google Docs
Illustrating– All My Magic

CEDO550 Week 1

I can relate the examples of online learning to my own experience in the following way. I see the need for individualized instruction and a new method to reach the “uninterested” students. I see e learning as a way to accomplish both. I think the model of teaching a specific topic, at a specific rate, to a group of students is out-dated. We need to teach students in a way that gets them excited about learning and at a pace that is right for them. Some students need a lot of guidance, others just need direction. Either way, this “new” way of teaching is more inline with how students learn.

These are some problems I had navigating the course management system and utilizing the discussion boards, can you help me with posting images from the web? I was unable to link to a picture. I had to download it and then upload it to the site.

I can imagine using Elluminate Live! for a web conference in order to teach a subject to the gifted and talented math students in our district. Right now, the GT teachers work in two buildings and work with two or three students at a time. It would be more cost effective and beneficial for the students to meet online for instruction with one teacher and then work at their own pace on their work. I think this would also allow for more courses to be taught using the GT staff and make it truly at GT program, not just an advanced math class.

I tried something new while working on this module and it made me think that I should really start teaching online. I applied to McFarland’s virtual school last year and did not get and interview. I’m hoping this certification will make me a more appealing applicant in the future. I love the idea of being able to reach and teach students at their own level. I think I can make a greater impact as a teacher this way.

540 Final Week Reflection

Well, this class ended up not being as scary as I first thought. I was so afraid it was going to be all math skills and it turned out to be completely different.

I don't know how much "hardcore" statistical information I will be analyzing in the near future, but at least now I have the background knowledge to discuss it without sounding like a complete moron.

I have to say, one of the neatest things I learned about in this class is Google Trends. I am watching to see if Ron Johnson is going to beat Russ Feingold. I hope not, but he is definitely getting more searchs than Russ. I'm hoping this is because he is less well known and people are trying to "feel him out." We'll find out in two weeks!

Week 5

Sorry for the late post, hectic week. This week my group and I looked at Google Trends. I had so much fun looking at this and now find myself looking at it daily to see what's popular on the web. I keep seeing football stuff and I hate football, but evidently other people like it a lot. I was just looking up "Disney" and found it intriguing that this search term spikes at the end of every year. Do they market more at the end of the year? Do they run specials at the end of the year? Do people start planning trips at the end of the year for the next year? Google Trends definelty can't answer those questions, but it is useful for finding out what people are interested in.

540 Week 4

This week we are looking at Bill Tancer and the company Hitwise. I bought the book he wrote, Click, and am loving it. It's really interesting! I am enjoying reading about what our searchs say about our society as a whole and am stunned at how accurate this method is. I would suggest picking up this title for your Kindle if you have one.

I was searching through Hitwise and was surprised that 4 out of the 10 top search terms this past month had to do with Facebook. I know it's popular, but 2/5 of all internet searches?! The number one fastest moving search term was "rare pink hippo", so of course I had to google it! He's really cute! I was not surprised then, when I started typing "rare pink" into my google search box, that it finished with hippo on it's own. :) I love you google.

CEDO540 Week 3: Surveys

This week, my group members and I are working on a survey. I totally forgot to blog until just now :( We surveyed people to see what the most popular social networking tool is. We will be looking at the results of the survey in an hour and a half and I'm anxious to see what is the number one and what ones were most popular by age group. I think this is great for teachers to know, especially middle and high school teachers, so that they can teach students how to keep themselves safe on social networking sites. I've found it's best to have an account in these sites so you can explain all the privacy settings and actually know what you're talking about. (then the kids think you're less of a nerd ;p)

CEDO 540 Week 2

This week I been looking at different survey software and messing around with statistics functions in Excel. I have used a few of the free survey software packages before. Our district uses Survey Monkey to have us assess our monthly collaborative meeting time. I had fun using the functions in Excel. I had never used the median or skew functions before this class. I am extremely comfortable using Excel and making graphs, it's going to be a whole different thing to interpret data from Excel and formulate an educated reason for findings in a research report. I have been reading Statistics in Plain English, which I bought for my Kindle app on my iPad. It's great. I feel like I finally "get" it. I am reading over this site to learn ways to make more complex graphs.

I'm looking forward to doing the survey and analysis part of this class. I think it will be very eye-opening and a great experience.

CEDO 540 Week 1

I'm having a bit of trouble wrapping my head around the material in this course thus far. I know why I'm having trouble, I need to be shown how to look at and complete a math problem and then walked through a few examples as I do them myself. I've always needed a mesh of hands on and direct instruction to understand new math concepts. I'm hoping we walk through how to do these problems in Monday's course or I'm going to be completely lost!! I did figure out how to compute mean, mode, median, etc using excel, which has been very helpful, but I still am lost as to how to use this data to figure out problems. I did my best to complete the worksheets for Monday, but I'm not sure I did them completely right.

Here are my questions:
What exactly does Standard Deviation tell use about a sample?
When graphing a sample, do you graph in the order you have the data listed, or do you sort the data in order?
How do you graph skew?
If mode and range are not very useful, why do we calculate them?
How do I use mean, median, mode, SD, range, and skew to get a "whole" picture of what a population might look like?

CEDO535 Week 5

This week I worked primarily on my wiki. I think this is going to be an invaluable resource for my students, my coworkers, and myself. I am making a collaborative wiki for the staff to share their favorite online resources, be it lessons or activities. I have separated it by grade and by subject. I put a bunch of links in already and will keep chuggin along.

I have been tweeting and reading twitter. I have gotten some great ideas for lessons. I have also been religiously reading my blogs using Google Reader. It's amazing and sooooooooooooooo helpful. I am just loving it.

I had a rough week. My puppy got pneumonia and had to be hospitalized over the weekend. I had a tough time getting back to life after this and am busy nursing him back to health. He's on two antibiotics, Robitussin, and I have to give him nebulizer treatments and perform coupage...try performing coupage on a schnauzer (you will get bitten).

535 Week 4: Quit asking me and WATCH THIS!

I am in LOVE with screencasting. My husband has been doing it forever and I just never jumped on the bandwagon...well I'm on it now! This is hands-down the easiest way to teach people how to perform tasks on the computer. I must spend hours writing up directions, inserting images to go along with the text, etc. for simple tasks for both staff and students. NO MORE! I am going to creating a bunch of screencasts using either Screenr or Jing to share with staff and students on how how to perform task such as saving to their directory, creating links, using social bookmarking, etc. This is going to make my job easier and everyone learn better.

I am also so excited about podcasting. I know for sure I'm going to have my fifth graders create trailers for their favorite books. It's going to be AMAZING. I'll share the lesson and results after we get started. I am going to incorporate a podcast into each grade level (K-5) any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

You should check out this trailer on a popular little computer game you may remember, it's hilarious!

CEDO535: Week 3 - RSS, and Flickr, and Google Sites OH MY!

I learned a lot more about RSS this week and will be able to carry this on to my school. I started a blog where I will share tools, how-to's, and other technology-related ideas with my peers, students, and community. I added my RSS blogroll to my blog so others can use these resources and see where I get all of my great ideas from. I think it would be great to show other teachers how to use RSS so that we can incorporate this technology into their (and their student's) research. In fifth grade, students do a research report. This would be a great way for them to research without even doing the work! It's like cheating, but in an awesome way. This is a great blog I read about RSS in schools. You should check it out- and read the comments!

Charlie on Couch

Charlie
Originally uploaded by Sarah Shagam

Charlie Up Close

Charlie
Originally uploaded by Sarah Shagam

Cheddar in Sock Monkey Bed

cheddar
Originally uploaded by Sarah Shagam

nyc

nyc
Originally uploaded by Sarah Shagam

My Side of the Wedding Party

wedding13
Originally uploaded by Sarah Shagam

Justin & I

wedding11
Originally uploaded by Sarah Shagam

viola

viola
Originally uploaded by Sarah Shagam

sky

sky
Originally uploaded by Sarah Shagam

love

love
Originally uploaded by Sarah Shagam

Charlie's First Bath

charilie first bath
Originally uploaded by Sarah Shagam

Our Honeymoon at Disney

justin me disney
Originally uploaded by Sarah Shagam

Fat Pumpkin

Fat Pumpkin
Originally uploaded by Sarah Shagam

Cheddar

Cheddar
Originally uploaded by Sarah Shagam

Napping Pumpkin

Napping Pumpkin
Originally uploaded by Sarah Shagam

My new school blog

I've started a blog for school! Come see it!

535 Week 2: Wikis!

I have thoroughly enjoyed this weeks activities! My eyes were opened to the possibilities of using wikis. I'm no longer skeptical of my students using Wikipedia, which I had always thought of(wrongly!) as an unrealiable resource. I have a wiki page of my own and a pbwiki page. This week have learned a lot more about effective ways to use wikis in my classroom and I now feel like I can use these sites to their full potential.

I am working on making a collaborative pbwiki site for my fourth graders to use for a group project they do towards the end of the year. I am also working on making my wiki site better for me and for my students. Right now I just use it as a place for links and resources, which is good, but the next step is to use it to keep parents informed on what we are doing in the classroom. I am considering using a blog for this, but I might just use my wiki. I like the idea of parents and students being able to comment or ask questions via the blog. I could have them join my wiki for this, too. I will just have to work with both and see which I like better.

(Image from teacher-share.wikispaces.com)

Motivation

How do you motivate students to do something they don't want to do? My summer school classes are full of kids who "hate" to type. Some of them can literally stare at their fingers for 45 minutes instead of typing. NO amount of prodding, helping, etc gets them moving. I want to light a fire under their tushes to get them moving. Right now I'm watching one student. He has typed seven words in THIRTY MINUTES. SEVEN for gods sake. How can you just sit there and stare off into space for THIRTY DARN MINUTES. I'm so frustrated with this group. I love to do my part to help struggling kids in summer school, but this year may be the straw that broke the camel's back..no more summer teaching for me!

Blog This!

This week's work got me really excited about blogging! I want to fill my head with as much knowledge and experience as much as I can before school starts so I can hit the ground running with a classroom blog next year. I am exploring different blogging tools to figure out what is right for me and my students. In my search I found this great website about blogging in schools. I am exploring EduBlogs as a possiblity for creating my blog. Here's my blog so far, with nothing on it =P but it's a start, right?!

I'm also excited to learn more about Wikis. I have a wiki that I use with my students that needs to be improved greatly! I can't wait to make this more useful for me and my students.

Week 5: Pecha Kucha - Gesundheit

So sorry that this is late. My mom had an accident and I've been dealing with that. She's fine, just lost two teeth and got three stitches to put her lip back together.

Anyways, about this week. I'm having trouble getting my Pecha Kucha to a low enough file size to upload it to the Angel site. I've tried three different formats and various settings within each. I'm going to try to upload to voicethread and see if that helps.

I still need to finish up my multimedia rubric. I'm using a project that I already have a rubric for and updating it. I use Rubistar to make my rubrics and then download them to Excel to clean them up and do the final editing.

I enjoyed working with my group to look at pocket camcorders. I like this technology and think it is very useful and affordable for schools.

Week 4: The plot thickens

I am really excited about using Prezi. I am in love with the functionality of this tool! I am a little flustered by the Pecha Kucha. I want to make it something I'm enthusiastic about, so I chose my cats (I'm such a crazy cat lady!)

I really wish we had made a great digital story from start to end throughout this class. I think that would have helped me to use digital storytelling in my classroom next year.

I loved looking at the sample presentations in Pres. Zen. They were helpful for getting a big picture idea of what a good presentation looks like. Then, watching the Ted videos gave me a full circle look at what it LOOKS like to be a good presenter.

I am feeling more confident in my ability to create and give a great presentation. I am still not so sure about my ability to create a great digital story, much less teach a student how to do so. I'm guessing this will come with research and practice.

Week 3: Digital Storytelling

I learned a lot this week. I got to view a lot of really great PowerPoint presentations and that has helped me to make my own really great PPT. I am now more confident that I can get my point across when giving a presentation, rather than putting my audience to sleep. I am also a little more likely to use PPT in the classroom and hopefully my new found skills will rub off on my coworkers who have atrocious ppts!

I now feel confident that I can make a digital story. I am worried about the whole design piece of it, as I sometimes don't feel very artsy. I found this website and it has given me even more resources for my own digital stories as well as ideas for the classroom.

I'm thinking about making some family story digital stories this summer. Especially ones to remember my deceased grandparents, to share with my family. I am going to research more about their lives before I knew them (my grandpa was in the Navy during the Korean war). I think this will be a great summer project!

Digital Storytelling: Week 2

I enjoyed this weeks class work. I especially liked the reading from Presentation Zen and how it is helping me to create better presentations. I have already revised a PowerPoint presentation that I use for second grade to talk about plant adaptations. I have them create their own plant for a specific habitat and show me how it has adapted to that specific environment.


I have found a lot of lessons that I can use to incorporate digital storytelling into my curriculum. I can do at least one with each grade level 2-5(I chose grade level activities based on what we teach at different grade levels in our district.

Second Grade: Habitats
Third Grade: Japan Story (instead of Japan book I do now)
Fourth Grade: Grandparent Tea or similar family story
Fifth Grade: Name Meaning Autobiography

Digital Storytelling Week 1

This is the first week of Digital Storytelling. All of the other tech teachers in my district just took a digital storytelling class through the district so I am excited to learn more about this.

I really like telling stories. I would like to learn how to tell stories better and how to teach my students how to share their stories. I think this course is going to provide me with the tools I need to incorporate digital storytelling at all of my grade levels.

I am excited to learn about software that I use to share stories and to hear what my classmates stories are. Everyone in the cohort is unique and I hope to learn more about each of them during this class.

Chapters 9-11 Reflection

What type of technologies can I use to help students identify similarities and differences of different technologies?

I have a few great tools that I think I can use in my classroom across all of the ages that I teach. I can use Kidspiration with my 2nd graders and Inspiration with my 3-5 graders to create comparison and classification charts. I can use the tables feature in any of the word processing apps that we currently have to create the same types of charts. I think that with the age levels that I work with, these two options are the best available on our system.

I can think of a time that I asked students to do homework and practice at home for typing reinforcement and it did not go well. Unfortunatley, not all students have access to a computer. Many of my students are living below the poverty level and they were unable to complete the homework/practice. This made the achievement gap even greater between them and the students who had computers at home. I no longer give homework. I do, however, offer extra pratice that students can take home and paper keyboards for those who do not have a computer so that they can at least practice the fingering of the keys.

What questions do I have about using technology to generate and test hypothesis in my classroom?

- What types of hypothesis are relevant for my subject area?
- Can I integrate with another subject area to make this a feasible technique to use in my classroom?

Cooperative Learning and Reiforcing Effort

What kinds of technologies can I use to help students participate in cooperative learning?

My students range in age from 7-11. I try to find ways to help students collaborate on projects. Some of the technologies I can use that we currently have at school are:

* Movie Maker- various projects at each grade level
* MediaBlender/PowerPoint - create presentations as a group
I currently do this in a 4th grade project where students work in groups to create a band and tour around Wisconsin. I also utilize word processing software for students to collaboratively write about their band and the tour.
* Online webquests at various levels and about various topics
* Microsoft Word to create a website about a topic
When I taught middle school, I used iWeb with my eighth graders to do this
* PBWiki to create a website about a topic
I am going to be using this for them 4th grade band tour project for next year


What kinds of technologies can I use to reinforce effort?

I have never used technology to reinforce effort. Some ways I could do this are:

* Posting finished projects on a Wiki page
I used to do this with my middle-schoolers, I would post their web pages
* I use Engrade to track my students grades and timings in Keyboarding and technology. I could give them a code so that they could view their grades/info at home or school anytime.

Online Mapping Tools Comparison

I compared and contrasted the following three tools, bubble.us, mindmeister, and Webspiration.

I found bubbl.us very easy to use. It was easy to navigate the tools and easy to share my finished product. It is free, which is a fabulous price. The downside, it is not very "fancy" and does not have images. Out of the three it is the least impressive, yet simplest to use.


Mindmeister was also easy to use. It is free, but you only get three free mind
maps. You can delete the maps after you make them, so it is not entirely limiting. It is much prettier thanbubbl.us, but still does not have images. It shares the same enter and tab functionality (adding subtopics) as bubbl.us.


Webspiration looks and feels a lot like Kidspiration and Inspiration. This program was by far the most "advanced." It offers diagrams and outlines. The outlines are a nice added feature. It is a little more complicated to use mainly because of the added functionality. It has graphics and the ability to upload your own graphics.
view my map at: http://www.mywebspiration.com/view/378548a7215

I would use Webspiration in my classroom. I think that my kids would benefit from the graphical aspect of Webspiration. I could use it with my non-readers by having them mind-map using images rather than text. I love this use of nonliguistic representation!

Setting Objectives, Providing Feedback and Providing Recognition

What kinds of technologies can I use to help students set objectives?

I teach 2nd-5th grade, so I hesitate to let my younger students set their own objectives. However, I do think that I could use a survey tool, such as Survey Monkey or Poll Anywhere, to have my older students let me know what they are interested in learning about. I could also have them set goals and decide how to reach those goals using a similar tool.

I can think of a time that I asked students to provide feedback on another students work and I was not pleased with the results. Why did it not go well?

This year is the first year I have taught fifth grade technology. One of the projects that all of the Tech teachers do is mini book that the kids write about any topic they want. It is a six page book, with a minimum of three sentences per page. After students were done writing their books, I asked students to switch computers with someone else who was finished and read their work, checking for complete thoughts, as well as spelling and grammatical errors. When I went to do the double check before printing EVERY SINGLE book had at least five errors or had parts that did not make sense.

Now that I've sat and thought about it, I can tell you why it didn't go well, I never modeled for them what it looks like to edit someone's work for completion and we never discussed spelling and grammatical errors. Next year, I WILL model good writing and editing for my students before asking them to complete this task!


I can think of a time that I asked students to use a rubric I had created to self-assess their project before I graded it and I was not pleased with the results. Why did it not go well?

I'm pretty sure I know why this did not go well either. First of all, no other teacher in this building uses rubrics (which completely blew my mind!). I had not taken the time to read through the entire rubric and explain the scoring in detail. A great way I could have improved this would have been to use an example and grade it together as a class using the rubric. This may have clarified why I was expecting and how to use the rubric at the same time.

Feedback That Fits

I found this article to be extremely eye-opening. I think that many times, in my classroom, I forget what good feedback looks like and how to use feedback to move students forward, rather than judge their work. Being a computer teacher, I find myself having to correct students use of the functionality of software often. I am just finishing up a project where my students created point of view poems and then used the poems to create a MediaBlender presentation. I know throughout this process I have given praise on their creativity and use of the tool, but how do I go about giving them feedback on their grammar/spelling, etc. in a way that will allow them to grow as writers? I think sitting one-on-one may work best, but I have 108 students and this will be extremely time consuming, but beneficial for the students.

Principles of Learning & Principles of Teaching

I enjoyed reading this article. It made me think about what really goes into the planning and execution of teaching.

I liked how the learning principles matched up with the teaching principles well. Students learn based on their background knowledge, which can help or hinder learning, and teachers need to teach based on student's' background knowledge. Students need to make connections between new information and old information and teachers need to teach them how to make these connections. Learning goals need to be explained to the students so that they know what goal they are moving towards and teachers need to use these goals to create activities that move them towards these goals.

I found it interesting that I never thought about teaching the individual steps of a process and how we, as adults or experts, skip steps disregarding that fact that students need this information to connect or move from one idea to the next. I also found it interesting how the article talked about teachers roles. I think all to many times teachers forget to choose the appropriate role to get the desired outcome from students.

In my teaching, I know that I do not do a great job of explicitly explaining the outcomes of the lesson, unit, course, etc. I have been working to change that and it's a daily struggle to make sure I am letting the students know what I expect because they can't read my mind! I think it helps put a lot of pressure off of students when they know what is expected of them.

Week 2 CEDO 520

Busy, busy week.

I really loved the Noodle Tools link. So much so that I shared it with my entire staff :) I can think of so many uses for this, it's ridiculous. I am still digging though it...this could take weeks. I found the search engine assignment a little redundant as we covered search engines in the past two classes, but I suppose it never hurts to be inundated with information. I'm loving my Google Alerts; instead of looking for information for my PDP, it's coming to me. I finished my annotated bib and article review to keep myself ahead of the game. I read articles a lot, but it was good to have to think critically about them and offer a critique.

For anyone interested in using YouTube to enhance lessons, you should definitely read this article!

Week 1 CEDO 520

This past week, we looked at Internet Learning Resources. I found it interesting that there is quite a span of what the definition of this term can be. I see ILR's as sites that offer lesson plans, activities, professional development, etc.; anything that can enhance student and teacher learning on the Internet as well as teach students and teachers about the Internet.

I really like CyberSmart! and think you should all check it out.

Final Post CEDO 515

Class Summary

I really enjoyed this class. I learned about so many new tools that are web-based that I never knew about. I have been sharing these tools with my coworkers. I am looking at ways to incorporate what I have learned into my classroom. The online graphics programs are something I will definitely use with my students.

I am using the NetTrekker website to help change and add to my curriculum. This database of lesson plans is so amazing. The lessons are fun and engaging and will help me make so much needed updates to the curriculum I just inherited :)

The Edutopia website is something I will be sharing at my next team meeting. This was a fabulous, refreshing, and positive reminder for me of why I do what I do.

I have been looking at ways to change my lessons so that they allow for more creativity on the part of my students.I learned many useful ways to do so from the book and have been working to change one of the major units taught in fifth grade to make it more creative and student-centered.

I made a TLP which I plan to follow through on!

....I did so much in this class and it was all useful!!!

Week 5 CEDO 515

This past week we looked at professional development, evaluating software, and keeping up to-to-date on technology trends. I really found the evaluating software piece to be helpful. My district does not use anything specific to evaluate software and has no procedure for ordering software. I am using my new found knowledge to help the IT staff implement some of this into our district. I evaluated some software that I would like to purchase for my 1-3rd graders for next year to enhance my curriculum. Hopefully, since I did it in such a professional manner (using the eval tool, formally requesting, etc.) it will be looked at and ordered.

I am always looking for professional development opportunities. Unfortunately, as the book said, it's hard to find good technology PD. I will continue to try to find ways to enhance my knowledge of technology and technology trends to help me continue to become an even better Technology Enrichment teacher.