08 August 07 - 21:23PDA Activity Evaluation
The software/lesson that I'd like to work with is Quizzler. It can be used in any content area and could be used in grades 4-12+. It is still supported through the website www.quizzlerpro.com and the resources available there include documentation (getting to be a rare find these days!), clear explanations of the variety of software available and how to use each, and some free quizzes that anyone can download. The software has been optimized to work on iPhone which is encouraging - not only that it is that current but that perhaps the pda/phone merge will continue.
Initially I'd work with teachers to put existing quizzes on Palms as learning practice for students. Once students become fluent using the interface (ought to take all of 10 minutes), I want to teach them to create their own quizzes. We've been having students in middle school grades create their own quizzes on Moodle and it has proven to be a great learning exercise for ...
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24 July 07 - 22:33Portfolio Project Outline
My portfolio project goals:
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Experience selecting and/or creating meaningful artifacts that demonstrate my learning for each course.
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Learn more about what makes a meaningful reflection and learn to write meaningful reflections.
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Create a pleasing and navigable web to display my Lesley portfolio that also showcases my talents in creating web pages.
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Develop the portfolio in an expandable and updatable way that allows me to add personal, professional and future sections to it.
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Showcase areas of my personal perspectives on technology in education through the choice of artifacts and the reflections.
Portfolio Overview
Our state has established ICT ...
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11 July 07 - 17:36Podcasting Passwords
I had created podcasts before so it was interesting to work with a different front end. It's great to see so many new sites that can open the opportunities for using the web. I had first used audio in the multimedia course at Lesley and was immediately thrilled with how easy it was. I embraced using Audacity and since have taught it to many people and encouraged them to use audio for a variety of uses. Primary students in particular really like working with audio. I wasn't so thrilled with Podomatic.com. I spent a few days working on my speech - the idea came out of a class I was teaching on intro. to computers. Many of our teachers are still pretty green on technology and I realized that password information is pretty basic but very valuable to everyone - more and more as time goes on and we're creating more accounts and putting more things in applications and online. But the podomatic site didn't work for me to record at all - I just couldn't get it to record. ...
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25 June 07 - 19:35Using TrackStar
I created a TrackStar on the topic of secure email systems. It's a topic that's somewhat of a cross between medical and business emerging technologies. Most people are not aware of the necessity for medical facilities to set up special elaborate email systems that have a special level of security to ensure patient privacy and confidentiality. As more doctors and hospitals utilize email systems for various communications to parents, the need for security is apparent and more people will experience the process required. Instead of an email coming directly to a patient's inbox, they will receive a notification that an email communication is waiting for them on a secure server and they will be provided information to login and retrieve the data. Review my TrackStar here:
http://trackstar.4teachers.org/trackstar/ts/viewTrack.do? ...
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12 June 07 - 20:34Journal Article
The article read was on the Edutopia website and was titled: Media Smarts by Ken Ellis (url: http://www.edutopia.org/media-smarts). He proposes that since studies show that the average student spends over six hours a day plugged into some type of media versus homework time of less than one hour, schools need to inform students how to think about media more critically. Media literacy means a variety of things to different people ranging from graphic design, critical analysis, to encouraging schools to have more student-centered projects and coursework. The article cites resources that teachers can use to teach media literacy.
George Lucas (one of the founders of the Edutopia site) is quoted as saying, "it's time to change 'English' class into 'Communication' class, where students learn the grammatical rules of graphic arts, film, and music along with English grammar. It shouldn't be taught as some esoteric, arty thing. ...
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