Final Reflection

Final Reflection

Reflecting back on this journey, the words that come to mind are navigating, embedding, persistence and rewarding. 
Navigating:
As with any new tool, you need background knowledge, training and time.  I really appreciated how each activity was designed with these words in mind.  They began with an introduction to the tool or various tools we would be using, accompanied with a video clip which gave us the basic training we needed to dive into the activity.  For me, the biggest gift was the gift of time.  I had time to experiment, practice and play with the various Web 2.0 tools in a way that I would feel comfortable integrating them into some of my everyday lessons and communication.

Embedding:

I should also add HTLM code here, the big scary words of the past.  What was embedding and where and how did you embed what? I love how intuitive these have become.  I notice it more and more in projects I am doing on the computer.  Again, the gift of time gave us the opportunity to practice with a lot of trial and error in how each site uses it a bit differently than another.

Persistence:

Have the confidence to not give up and know that if I kept trying various ways, it would eventually come!  I think the activity that tests my persistence was creating the Google document and spreadsheet.  I was so determined to make it work like WORD and Excel that I truly was ready to throw in the towel.  Persistence paid off! I finally calmed down, or gave in, one of the two, and started from scratch using my prior knowledge to explore the tools provided by Google.  To date, I have now created two work documents for our team, and it is wonderful.

Rewarding:

Although there were times when I was frustrated, or worked through something only to say what I accomplished looks like I did it in a couple of minutes, I was proud of the process I went through to learn a new tool.  It has been extremely rewarding going through some struggles and conquering them.

An excellent case in point which demonstrates these four powerful words was Activity 8 – Data Gathering and polleverywhere.com. The main blog provided background knowledge on the use of the site accompanied by at video demonstrating how we could effectively use this tool.  I was so proud of how I navigated throughout the site and created a couple of polls quickly and intuitively, only to be stonewalled when I could not figure out how to embed the poll into my blog. Ah…this leads into the next word, persistence.  As my blog comments on how I worked through the embedding process, I did not stop until I had it figured out. I had embedded so many other tools in the previous activities that this one was not going to beat me.  Finally, I was rewarded for my efforts when the poll appeared on my blog.  I am going to use this tool at PIN night hoping to WOW my parents and draw them in.  I cannot wait! 

I tried to be purposeful in the activity I chose.  I chose ones I could implement at the beginning of the year. Some of them I will incorporate into my website, like the You Tube clips and the screencast I created on how to use the website, IXL.  I will use my tugxedo.com word play with student names on Meet Your Teacher Night along with the Google Form created “What’s the Buzz”.   I have already implemented the Cloud Computing by creating and “sharing” a couple of our team documents we developed this past week.  I am so thankful for the opportunity to have taken this type of course.  I know it has broadened my perspective on how I will look at presenting, creating and teaching.  Thank you to all for your comments, help and support!

Activity 10 - Free Choice

Activity 10 - Free Choice

I started out choosing Edmodo. It looks a lot like Facebook, but it has an educational focus. You can share information with students and Parent, create assignments and polls, and it has a Gradebook built in. 2nd grade does not use the MV Gradebook as the upper elementary grade do, so I thought I might give this a try. I set it up, had my boys enter sign in as students and we tried it out. I thought the site was intuitive and user friendly. I played with posting class information, downloading assignments and sending them, sending homework reminders and setting up a homework calendar. The only thing I was unable to figure out is how to use the Gradebook once a student submitted a lesson.

On the student side, it was just like using email. The posts, assignments and announcement all come through in a email format with tags letting them know the purpose and links to what they need to do. I did not pursue this any further in that I thought that it was a bit much for the computer knowledge that a second grade has. Time would be better spent preparing the students in using the MV Gradebook for the upcoming year.

Since I was unable to use Edmodo, I set up Delicious. Delicious.com is a social bookmarking site that allows you to collect, sort and share your favorite links and access them from any computer. I am really glad that I tried this site. It was quick and easy to set up. I set it up a way to save and organize links that I like. To share these links, you need to attach your links to a Facebook account.   My Facebook is linked to my other job, so I chose not to attach it to Facebook. I chose to book mark and catalog all of the sites that we have used in this class. Yea, now I will have one place to go to use the tools we have been working with.

Activity 9 - Fitness Assessment

Scenario 2: Blocking all Access

After hearing a presentation at a conference, your principal Mr. Smith has banned all Web 2.0 tools for students and teachers including Facebook, Skype, YouTube, wikis, blogs, and Flickr. A number of teachers and many students are upset with this decision but Mr. Smith cites legal reasons for
I find this scenario very intriguing. The first time I read through it, I thought how ridiculous it sounded. Citing legal reasons was over the top. I felt the principal should have responded more directly to what tools were being misused, how to properly use them and cite the rules needed to be followed to continue us of this tool in the classroom. Some of those reasons could have been the harassment issues or age restriction issues which had been mentioned. Problem solve as a TEAM!

Thinking about the scenario a second time, I can truly envision this as a possible reality down the road. When you look at the news and hear all of the incidences going on with our youth and even scandals within schools, it will take one major incident where a student has bullied another student causing a student to hurt themselves or others or even a teacher misusing it as a way to inappropriately infringe upon a student which will bring upon new laws pertaining to these Web 2.0 tools.

On a smaller scale, schools can be sued for any reason. It takes one disgruntled parent winning a major lawsuit to force schools and districts to ban the use of Web 2.0 tools.

When I search for You Tube video to use in the classroom, I often see inappropriate remakes of the topic I am looking for. The most recent example happened when I was working on one of the first blog assignments. I was looking for a video of the book Where the Wild Things Are. One of the videos used Maurice Sendak’s illustration and it began just like the book. Where the storyline changed and became inappropriate was when Max met the wild things. This video could have easily been chosen and started to be played in a classroom.

Scenario 7: Chernobyl Meltdown…

Ms. Jansen, a special ed. teacher, has been using screencasting in her class to post review screencasts of her lessons and study materials. These screencasts have been heavily used by students and she has received glowing emails from parents thanking her for going this extra distance. Ms. Jansen decides it’s time to have her students create their own screencasts. She struggles with how best to post and share their screencasts and decides to use a class YouTube account/channel. Because some students want to do screencasting from home, she provides students with the class YouTube username and password so they can upload their videos from home. Two disasters ensue: 1.) Students post more than just their screencasts including inappropriate random YouTube videos as well as change the privacy settings of the account. 2.) Students post video content of themselves and their peers and the teacher discovers that some of these students have “no photo” stipulations on file in the office. Before Ms. Jansen can even blink, these videos have been shared/linked to Facebook pages and have an assortment of inappropriate comments posted from outside users.

I believe we are closer to this scenario with many of the Web 2.0 tools than we would like to believe. Many school aged students do not have mature fillers needed use many of these tools appropriately within the classroom or at home. I also believe that the internet in general makes it easier for anyone to state something that they would never have the courage to say to someone in person. Along with this, it makes it much more difficult monitor what students are doing on their computers at home or in the classroom. The problem is bound to unfold in a classroom when one teacher needs to keep an eye on 27 computers, what is being made on them and the content which could be viewed lived and sent on to mass recipients. It is almost overwhelming when you think about it.

This is where I think Scenario 5 can come into play: Email Complication. To help protect and monitor what is being done in the classroom by students, there needs to be some safeguards put into place. Having limited access to the student us of a tool may come down to the district having to restrict access to anything outside itself. Difficult balance! One I am sure all districts will be focusing on and trying to find solutions to.

Activity 8 - Polling and Data Gathering

Activity 8 - Polling and Data Gathering

Polleverywhere.com has been the most challenging tool for me to date. I got hung up on a few issues that I could not take my blinders off to see the solution. I had taken a 10 question parent form we ask each parent to fill out about their child and easily entered each question and then became stonewalled! I used the tool bar at the top and started all of the polls thinking that they would be linked together and magically appear as one. The tasks on the right hand side all appeared with a "stop" button appearing. Wow, I thought, that was easy! I then spent the next couple of days trying to figure out where the polls went and how to embed them into my blog.

Here is where the blinders held me up...I had read at the very beginning that each poll was a separate poll, but when I click on "My Polls" they all appeared. Here I was able to put a check mark in front each poll, therefore assuming they were all grouped together. For the next two days I worked through everything that appeared on the "My Polls" page, BUT the actual controls to the right, which appear when you scroll over the individual poll, read "edit", "copy", "stop" and "delete". Well, I did not want to edit, copy, stop or delete my individual polls, I want to do it as a group. MISTAKE...I ignored them. Finally, I thought, forget the group and just work on one poll. It was magic! I was able to embed a single poll into my blog and text in a response. My response appeared live on my blog. I am glad I was persistent, I am feel quite proud of myself.







Google Forms was much more intutitve for me to build a form in order to gather data.  I was able to use the same questions I had tried to group in my PollEveryWhere survey.  I will try using this form on Meet Your Teacher Night.

Activity 7 - Cloud Computing

Activity 7 - Cloud Computing

I am always amazed at the amount of time I can spend playing with one document and then look at it and think that it should have only taken me 15 minutes.  A lot of the time is spent on organizing my thoughts, looking back at what we have done in the past and trying to force Google to work like a WORD or Publisher document. 

For this activity I chose to create a team newsletter.  We all put time into creating our individual newsletter each week when over 50% of what we each include is the same.  My thought is taking that overlapping material and placing it into one working document which will save everyone time each week.  It also helps during those weeks where we may be forgetting to include something that we all had agreed upon.  My other thought is to have all of the monthly newsletters in a separate working documents in order to be able to place things in as they are talked about at meetings. 

My first thought was to actually use the weekly communication template that we all use and fill in the information as is occurs.  As I tried to do that, the sheet became to cluttered and did not leave enough room for daily homework notes or communication.  I changed to a monthly sheet with bullet points, therefore, making it easy to glance at and read.  I have some tweaking to do with my team, but feel this is a good starting point. 

Click here to view my "September - What's Happening in 2nd Grade" Google document.