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Sunday, April 21, 2013

EME 5207: Digital Portfolio


Look how engaged they are with learning through technology!
 
Wordle on the SMARTBoard


Working on the wiki page





 


The What?

Using technology in a 4th grade classroom is EASY! As long as you provide the students with the correct tools and time to explore those tools. For my UF graduate class, Designing Technology- Rich Curricula, I was asked to integrate technology into my lessons and share my findings.

As an educator, I struggle with integrating technology into my lessons that allow students to be the creators and produce their own artifacts using technology. I feel this assignment helped me get out of my little box and allow my students to create their own work using technology.
 
The Artifacts?
Class wiki on Magnets- students are learning about magnets in class. I created a wiki on our classpage for them to add their learning to it as the unit progresses along. We are still working on the unit and the wiki is not finished. This is the start of it.
Poetry using Storybird and Jing- students are learning about poetry in class. This is an alternate idea for students who are struggling with writing their own poems. Students can select a picture and use the words given to create a poem. Then students can use Jing to do a screencast of their poem and describe what the poem means to them.
Character Traits on Literary Characters using Wordle; another example, another example- we are reading "A Land Remembered" by Patrick D. Smith in class. Students were asked to create a character trait Wordle for any character in the book. We added these to our class webpage and compared and contrasted the students Wordles to others in the class.

The Tools?
 
The Verdict?
The students loved the technology assignments and asked for me to link the sites we used to our class webpage, so they could play around with it more at home and on their free time at school. The lessons weren't as scary to implement as I THOUGHT they would be. My students knew more about technology than I anticipated. I found that a few students were the perfect assistants in helping their classmates when they ran into a problem. The students had never used these tools before, but I can assure you they will use them as needed from now on.
 
 The Rubrics?

Here are the rubrics I created for two of the assignments to grade the students with. Feel free to use or change to meet your needs.


Storybird Poem and Jing Rubric

5
3
1
Theme
Selected words match the feel of the image student selected.
Selected words somewhat match the feel of the image selected.
Selected words do not match the feel of the image selected.
Rhythm/Beat
Poem has a rhythm/ beat throughout the whole poem.
Poem has a rhythm/beat in some areas of the poem.
Poem does not have a rhythm/beat in the poem.
Flow
Poem makes sense
Poem somewhat makes sense
Poem does not make sense/ string of words
Voice
Student’s voice has a clear and steady pace
Student’s voice is somewhat clear and somewhat steady pace.
Student’s voice is not clear or doesn’t have a steady pace.
Poem meaning
Student’s meaning of the poem makes sense
Student’s meaning of the poem somewhat makes sense.
Student’s meaning of the poem does not make sense.
Use of technology
Effectively used technology.
Some errors in the usage of technology.
Many errors in the use of technology.

 

Student Name:___________ Grade:_____/30
 
 
Wordle: Character Traits
5
3
1
Character Traits
Student had at least 10 character traits for their selected person.
Student had 5-9 character traits for their selected person.
Student had 4 or less character traits for their selected person.
Accuracy
Character traits were accurate descriptions of chosen character.
Character traits were somewhat accurate of chosen character.
Character traits were not accurate of chosen character.
Spelling
Student had no spelling errors.
Student had 1-3 spelling errors.
Student had 4 or more spelling errors.
Overall design
Design is easy to read and appropriate for the character.
Design is somewhat easy to read and appropriate for the character.
Design is not easy to read or appropriate for the character.
 
Student Name:___________ Grade:_____/20
 
Comments or Questions?
Feel free to leave any comments or questions in the comment box below. I would love to hear from you if you use any of these activities in your own classroom. How do you use them? Have you found success? Anything I should try with my students?

Thursday, March 28, 2013

Multimedia in the Classroom

Below is a screencast for a presentation I created for my Graduate class at UF EME 5207: Designing Technology-Rich Curricula. Our assignment was to create a multimedia artifact showing our knowledge of legally using copyrighted material and Creative Commons License. If you would like the actual file to the Powerpoint... just ask! I can email it to you. As you will see below, I created my own Creative Commons License on my work.

It is simple, easy and FREE to do for your work that is shared on the internet. Just visit www.creativecommons.org for more information.


View my project! It's 5 minutes long.
http://screencast.com/t/qJ0aXMja

Creative Commons License

This work by Whisper Wiseman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Technology Standards and Goal for the 21st Century Student

 Here you will find a link to a digital artifact that I created for one of my Graduate classes. I will provide a link to my screencast that I created for the project and also the powerpoint itself so you can look at it more closely.

http://screencast.com/t/EYqQBD9ezV



Bottom line is that educators need to revamp their teaching style and learn to be UNCOMFORTABLE with teaching. Yes, UNCOMFORTABLE!!!

If you are comfortable with what you are teaching, then you aren't learning and growing as a teacher. We are losing our students every day to the fast paced world of technology. Just face it and get over it. How are you going to pull those reins back? How will YOU teach your students the skills needed to prepare for a job that hasn't even been created yet?

How will YOU teach a child to create their own learning? To want to learn? To be engaged in their learning?

Utilizing technology in your classroom is the way to grasp the minds of your students and help them tune in. I don't mean to put them on a game, but to teach them HOW to recreate what is in their mind through technological tools?

How can you do that if you don't branch out and learn some new technology tools yourself?

Go ahead and GET UNCOMFORTABLE! You won't regret it... I promise.

Sunday, January 27, 2013

SmartBoard!

I FINALLY received a SmartBoard in my classroom. Not sure how I ever taught without that thing. It is Ah-Ma-Zing let me tell you. I believe EVERY educator should have one as long as they take a training on it. It really has brought the learning alive! The students love using it to show their work and debate with each other. If you have a SmartBoard, any suggestions on what I HAVE to do on it?

Saturday, August 11, 2012

Wikispaces

This year I am going to set my class up on wikispaces.com . My daughter's teacher created one for her class and it focused on a non-fiction unit. I am thinking that I will use it for a Science unit and assign partners a topic to create a page within the wiki. It could be their final project. Does anyone else have ideas for ways to use a wiki in the classroom?

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Jing- eling-ling a ling!

http://screencast.com/t/XEIWjXiV4N8

My professor recommended I use screencasting website to turn in an assignment. Can I tell you how much I LOVE this?  How did I not know about this before? The link above directs you to a screencasting that I made showing my professor the three sites that I created for my school and how they are being utilized. Since then I have shared this knowledge with our Curriculum Specialist and another one has been made for our school showing the staff how to access our online forums and post in them. I will also be creating one the staff at my school on how to use the new Reading Counts incentive that we are about to launch. Like I said, how did I not know about this before? I am excited to be a part of launching this "new for us" digital technology at our school to help better our collaboration among the staff. 
visit:Jing for yourself and help change they way to present to your staff  or students :)

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Multiplication Masters

I created a wonderful multiplication resource to use in your classroom. This hotlist is a one stop place for an online mutliplication unit to help enhance your school's math curriculum. It provides a pre and post test, videos and games for your students to learn their multiplication facts. If you use this site, please leave me feedback on your experience with it.