Voice Thread, Animoto and Face to Face

Wow, it has been a long time since my last blog. We had our face to face weekend and I had the chance to try out some new sites.
First, the face to face weekend. I had the chance to present 2 mini-lessons. It is strange but after teaching for 7 years I was more nervous to teach these lessons than I am in front of my class or supervisors. I was also surprised how many people had a basic understanding of Mary Cariola and the type of population we service.

As for my projects, I used Voice Thread and Animoto. It was interesting to see that most of the applications we looked at this week were not really created for education. The educational uses just happened afterwards. It was difficult to think of projects to create with students as they would need a lot of staff assistance. In the end I decided to make a virtual scavenger hunt with voice thread where students are given an image and they have to find community signs that we have been learning. They have to identify on the picture which one they found and then they could record themselves giving a short description of the sign they found. I had the students create an video portfolio of the year using animoto. My students do a lot throughout the year so this would be a great way to document all of the things they do and then save it so they have that visual reminder of what they did. Now, as I am writing this I am thinking that this could be used as a visual task analysis for students doing jobs out in the community. Using pictures to show the sequence of events.

There are just so many ideas. I can not wait to try some of these once I get back into the classroom. I am excited though that I can use this time now to guide and assist other teachers on the technology that is out there as we do not have an educational technology position at our school.

Until next time.

Dipity, Mindmeister, and a life lesson

Stick a fork in me... I'm done. Getting this weeks assignments done was a bit more challenging than usual. Lots of family issues that needed to be taken care of over the weekend made this project hard to concentrate on and finish on time. I was able to sit down tonight and get it done. This week we looked at dipity and mindmeister.

These are both 2.0 tools that I have not even really heard of, so I was excited to try something new. I started with my dipity project. I created a personal time line. I made this to show my students and example of what to create. We talk a lot about ourselves and our experiences and I felt in some classrooms this would be a fun useful tool to show milestones about ourselves. I did like that this allows users to create their own timelines for free. I did have some trouble uploading pictures, some took 2 or 3 tries and I know classmates also had some issues accessing the site. I don't know if this was just a fluke or a regular occurrence when using the site.

All about Me :) on Dipity.

I created a bare bones mind map using mindmeister. I like mind maps and created one to show our core values which would link to different activities for each topic. However, I decided to just sign up for the basic free account which did not allow me to add in my own graphics. I found one that was similar to the one we use at school but for things like this it is vital for consistency and to show students the same image for the same idea. Ideally, my mind map would include all of the boardmaker symbols that we use to represent each of the ideas. I would have also liked to have more control of where the 3rd level of ideas went. They all got grouped together in a list. I would have had them spread out a little more making more of a web look to the graphic.

Have a great, restful Thanksgiving.

Until Next Time. 

Boardmaker Share

Here is a quick video of how to create a new account on Boardmaker share. Boardmaker Share is a file sharing community for people using Boardmaker software such as Boardmaker Plus, Speaking Dynamically Pro, and Studio. I use the site all of the time to download activities and then modify them to my classroom. I will post another tutorial on how to share your activities.

My first Prezi

Well, this week I made my first Prezi.

Gomulak-Cavicchio Solar System on Prezi

Honestly, I am not all that impressed with Prezi. Yeah, it has some cool features and neat ideas for transitions but I did not like the fact that it had to be linear, there is only one way to go through the slide show. Yes, sometimes this is good but sometimes it is fun to let the students explore where they are going. I may have had a different opinion of I had started a Prezi from scratch. I used a presentation I have done on 2 other presentation platforms. First, I created a similar presentation on Boardmaker Plus that I have actually used in my classroom. It starts with students having to correctly identifying the planets from a word bank. Then they could click on a planet to find out more. Once they were on the slide with the planet Boardmaker would read and highlight as it was speaking. Furthermore, using the symbolate tool, picture symbols are automatically added for each word and aligned perfectly. Over the summer I created a similar presentation using PowerPoint for a grad class. We were to make a non-linear presentation. I wanted to compare the two methods of presentation so I created a similar presentation. While, I was not in love with my PowerPoint, I did not hate it either. It was different. I had to find pictures of the planets and manually put them into all of my slides. A bit tedious but not insurmountable. So here I am another presentation another method. I tried importing all of my slides. That was a pain in the first place. All of the slides I took so long formatting so that the pictures were the right size and in the right place, did not transfer correctly. Prezi recognized text and images separately and not the slide as one cohesive unit. At this point, I feel confidant that I can compare all 3 equally. I have to say the winner for my current setting is Boardmaker Plus. It just fits what I need and allows me some flexibility as far as programming goes. PowerPoint and Prezi do have their advantages but Boardmaker offers more.

On another quick note. This week I am starting a temporary position for the next 3 months filling in as Temporary Classroom Skills Instructor while the person is out on maternity leave. I am excited to work on training staff but sad to be leaving my classroom behind. Hopefully, I can work more on assisting my co-workers on using some of the technology we do have. I may be posting more frequently on here as I try to add tutorials for work related items.

Until next time!

BeeClip EDU

After looking at BeeClip EDU and Glogster I chose to work with BeeClip as it seems a more realistic option to use in my current setting. It just seemed easier and there were less choices for customization which would help my students. It also worked well that I immediately thought of a unit I have planned for a few weeks from now that would work for this assignment. I work with students with special needs who need a lot of help when it comes to identifying emotions, their own and others. In a few weeks we are working on recognizing another's feelings. I created a scrapbook that shows pictures of different feelings.
I enjoyed creating this scrapbook. One thing that i did not like was that at times the button to rotate the pictures was not in the same spot, sometimes it was on top other times it was on the side. Other than that it was easy to use and add pictures. Hope the rest of the apps are this easy.

Until next time. 

Tagxedo

Well, it was a BUSY week so I am going to make this brief. Sorry. I worked with Tagxedo this week. I just picked this one for no particular reason as I have not had any experience in Tagxedo or Wordle. I took an adapted newspaper I use in school and added the text. For my students, this year, this seems like too much going on. They would miss the point of what they were looking at and become overstimulated. I did look online and found a suggestion to make one that has just the students name. This might be useful for some of the students at my school, if not my classroom who have a difficult time with word recognition. I would love to see if I could use they symbols we use for common items and use that as the shape for a Tagxedo. That would give the word and shape more power and might work for some students where traditional methods have failed. Overall, I enjoyed my experience in trying out Tagxedo, I look forward to using it more and learning more about different Web 2.0 tools.

Until Next Week!

Web 2.0

Sadly, I have very little experience with Web 2.0 as a student or teacher. I was last a student over 10 years ago so we did not do too much in terms of technology. As a teacher I work with students with special needs in a 7:1+4 classroom. Technology is not always a priority. Let alone web 2.0 applications. For the students who do use the computer, we work on basic computer skills such as opening word documents, saving etc. We also work on basic internet skills such as looking up important information such as phone numbers for services they may need. I am very interested in learning how to use the different tools in the weeks to come, if not for my current classroom, then for something in the future.

Microsoft Access Part Deux

I hate to say it but I love Access! I found this project pretty easy. I had a hard time coming up with my different queries, forms and reports but actually doing them was a piece of cake. I figured there would be more than 1 table to work from with look up fields and data validation. With all that being said, I don't see myself using Access in this way with my students in my current position. I do think I will be able to continue to use it to help keep track of formal IEP goals and informal goals that students are working on from year to year. I'd love to hear how others are using it and if anyone else ran into difficulties.

Until next time :)

Microsoft Access Part I

This weeks technology topic was Microsoft office.  However, there was no project to go with this weeks lessons. Hence, the part one and shorter blog entry. I have played around with Access before on a project for work. I ended up borrowing a book from our IT dept. and teaching myself. I was putting together a database for recording and storing data for students 12 years and older on vocational activities. Furthermore, the project was to include ways to print individual reports for each student. Unfortunately, the project did not get finished, but I was able to teach myself a great deal of how to use Access and get to see some of the advantages firsthand. I loved spending time designing databases and using Access. That is one thing I have noticed using Access that could be noted as a disadvantage, it takes time and planning in order to make a good database. I am actually looking forward to finding out what next week's project is.

Until next week :) 

You've Got Mail Merging

This weeks applications adventure was a combining of Word and Excel called mail merger. All I can say is: Wow! I thought I was experienced in Microsoft products but this was new to me and it was awesome. For those of you not experienced in this, mail merging allows you to type up a form in word and insert information from an Excel file. For example, this week we made a grade book created in Excel and used Word to create a form letter and have it automatically insert fields from the spreadsheet, such as first and last name, grades and comments. Once the form was completed you simply hit merge fields and you have personalized lists for everyone. I can see many uses for this in my school, more to help my colleagues than to help myself but, it's all about sharing that information. We did not get into using filtering to create specific lists but that was a neat feature I got to play around with. It could be used for students that have not achieved a certain average or for attendance reports, really the list goes on and on. And while I would love to go on I will end it here and let you all explore mail mergers for yourself.
Until next time.

Joe and Microsoft's Excellent Adventure

Another post, another movie title reference. Unfortunately, not another dollar to go along with this post, but I'm not doing it for the fame or money. I, like others, am posting for the ultimate extrinsic motivator...a grade. Don't get me wrong, I have enjoyed blogging. I have wanted to start for a while. Hopefully this class will get me in the habit and I will continue to give my thoughts on Ed Tech.

This week I got to play around with Excel. Now I enjoy spreadsheets and have played around with excel in the past. However, I had a chance to reintroduce myself to Excel using the 2010 version this time around. I enjoyed it. The grade book was fun to format and being into math I also really enjoyed creating the formulas for the weighted grade. I want to do something similar to this at work where we keep track of student competencies for jobs that they do. The forms are already in Excel it's just a matter of formatting and adding formulas and linking workbooks together. The other part of the project was more fun. I never really thought about how to use excel with my students. Alternate assessment time is coming up and with 3 out of 7 students needing high school evaluations done this year it is certainly on my mind. Graphing and reading graphs are part of the math grade level indicators so I went and played around with making surveys and graphs and pie charts. Instead of using Boardmaker, I am going to try and do some work on Excel for my students to do this year. I also enjoyed making math worksheets. It would be better if I found a way to randomize numbers within a range in order to make it more challenging.

Well another week down and another application explored. Until next week.

The Wonderful World of Word

This past week I got to work with Microsoft Word. First, I want to talk about getting word. I have an older computer. I am running Microsoft XP and I have had Word 97. Well, that is not nearly new enough for a newly matriculated (for the second time) graduate student. I was like a kid in a candy shop at Best Buy. I bought a new 2 TB external hard drive and the university version of office 2010! So needless to say I was excited this week to try out my new Word 2010. I have used Word 2007 at work but using MY version was so much more gratifying.

I was impressed with some of the additions to word. Like I said before I have used 2007 a bit but just for basic word processing. I create a lot of social narratives I use with my students or letters to send home to parents.

My first project used smartart. I never used smart art before and really enjoyed using it. It made making my graphic organizers much easier. I easily could have made 3 very different graphic organizers for this project. I will continue to use this feature in my classroom to create visuals for my students.

My second project was a calendar. Long ago, I made several templates in Word 97 for calendars where the months started on each different day of the week. I had to format the table to get everything right and the headers are not all the same. This easily takes care of all the little formatting issues I would have spent a long time worrying about trying to make my calendar look professional. I am going to use the calendar I created for my lesson plan book for October.

My final project was a timeline about the civil war. My students will not learn about the civil war as most things we do are life skills curriculum. I wanted to do something fun for me. I enjoy learning and reading about the civil war so I wanted to do this. I really liked doing this project although it was not much more than table with some shapes. I decided to add hyperlinks. I did not spend too much time looking for good links, I just wanted to do it as something I could envision using with this type of word file.

Overall, I love word as I have used it for a very long time (I won't say how long as it may indicate how old I really am). I enjoyed learning about these new templates on word and look forward to using them to help make my job preparing and planning a little easier.

Until next week :)

Google Apps

I had the opportunity to use Google docs for my applications class this past week. I have had some experience using Google docs in the past, but not too much. So here is my impression of the good, the bad, and the ugly of Google Docs.

First, the good. I loved using Google docs and saw MANY uses for it in my current position. For example, while I mainly use the computer in my classroom for work related documents it would be a huge relief to be flexible to move anywhere within the school building to work, or even at home in those rare instances that I am able to work at home. I typically use flash drives to do this, but found them to be unreliable. Over the summer i made the grave mistake of making one of those impulse buys at a store that had 8GB flash drives for $10. My spiddy senses should have gone off at the point realizing that a flash drive of that size at that price had to be too good to be true. I found out why 3 days later when I plugged my drive into the usb port and everything I had was gone. Luckily, we were not too far and I did not loose too much but a lot of trouble could have been avoided if I just used Google Docs and my Google drive. I also love the ability for multiple users to edit a document simultaneously in real time. This is another great feature I could use in my current position. I have to make individual schedules for each of my students. However, I need to include the schedules the adaptive phys. ed. teacher, music therapists, occupational therapist, speech therapists, transition coordinators, and any other person that needs to see the student into account. I have done this for 8 years now and not once have I made it through without there being some sort of scheduling conflict that has been overlooked. Utilizing google docs would hopefully eliminate these conflicts.

Now the bad. There are fewer "bad" issues and they are minor. The main bad issue is that the storage is unlimited for Google docs created or converted files. However, when you want to store files in different formats you run into storage limits. There is a 5 GB limit for free storage on Google drive of non-Google doc formats. I tend to do a lot of activities on Boardmaker Plus and Boardmaker Studio. These files take up more space than Google docs so its not a big issues but not something that can be looked over either.I have also not looked into how easy it is for non-Google users to edit shared documents. This would definitely be something that needs to be taken into account if I plan on using this before the rest of my school is on board. Anothe issue I had was the print function. I was a little put off by google docs having to make things into PDF then having to print separately from the PDF. My margins in the document were not the same from Google to pdf which can cause issues when formatting documents to be on a single page.

Finally, the ugly. The issue is not so ugly for me, but I can see some people I work with having a HUGE issue with moving to Google doc created schedules. For example, the adapted phys. ed. teacher would have too many individual schedules to edit. There are 24 classrooms on our campus, 21 rooms have 7 students, 1 room has 6 and 2 have 8 students - that is 169 individual schedules she would have to edit. I certainly sympathize with this I do see this as a way of avoiding those scheduling conflicts that come in the beginning of each semester and summer session. While this issue has some possible solutions, such as having one of our teacher aides take care of this, it must be addressed in order to gain support from all different staff members.

Overall, I am impressed with what Google docs and drive have to offer. I am going to start using this and hopefully convert some of my coworkers to using this to create schedules, share lesson plans, and create curriculum.