EDO525: Final Blog-Making Strategies Work

It's been almost 20 years since I've been in college full time, in the school of education. Even when I was in school, my major was English teaching, so although I had education courses, the focus of my studies was literature, and that is where I generally excelled. Honestly, the education courses I had were pretty meaningless to me. Afterall, I had yet to experience the real classroom environment so studying various theories and practices was like learning to build a house without driving a nail. Hence, I found the strategies we learned in 525 to be extremely helpful. Even though I've incorporated all of these strategies at one time or another, I don't recall ever really learning them or having them so nicely laid out for me like the textbook did. As I peruse over the strategies, I find that I'm strong in many of them but very weak in others.

My strengths tend to be giving recognition, incorporating nonlinguistic learning, providing plenty of practice with little homework, and generating hypotheses. In addition, I think I provide many opportunities for cooperative learning but not necessarily by creating small groups. Instead, as students work, I often allow them to talk to each other and help each other out. I find that this form of cooperative learning not only assists students who have difficulties, but also strengthens the skills of my more accelerated learners.

As I glance at the long list of strategies and technologies, however, I can see several areas where I could use improvement. I always set objectives for my lessons but as I've pointed out elsewhere, I rarely actually state those objectives to the students, nor do I provide cues and questions to direct their learning. I guess in the past I've assumed that the best way to educated my students is for them to follow the lesson, allowing them to have their "ah-ha" moment at the end. After reading the textbook, however, I can see that I might have more success if I tell them where we're going first. Doing so will still give them the "ah-ha" moment while making it clearer the direction we're headed in the first place. In addition, although many of my projects include rubrics, I think I need to provide more feedback and, in general, more communication. I have to admit, like many teachers, I get behind on my grading and so the turnover between presentation and feedback is too long. Incorporating various technologies would most likely help this. Finally, now that I'm actually taking classes in my current field and getting the training I need, I am getting my hands on many, many new resources that I can take right back to my classroom. Thus, this fall I will have a variety of applications that my students will be able to use at home. When I introduce and talk about these applications, however, I will have to be sure to include the strategy of identifying similarities and differences. Prior, I rarely compared and contrasted. Instead, I would simply introduce each subject as something new.

Being the technology teacher, I have all the technologies necessary to incorporate into my strategies and really no excuse not to. To communicate objectives to my students I can do everything from creating Powerpoint shows to laying out the objectives in a Word document. In addition, my District is fortunate enough to have Kid and Inspiration, which I have very rarely used in the past but which I will find extremely valuable now for a variety of strategies, including brainstorming and communicating objectives and providing cues and questions. In addition, I will use Kidspiration as a group to look at the similarities and differences between different applications. For example, in the past my students have only used MS Word for all word processing, but this fall I plan to create Google accounts for my older students. Therefore, they will now have the option of using two word processing applications. I plan on showing them even more, such as Thinkfree and Etherpad which provides actual real time group collaboration. Kidspiration will be an excellent tool for comparing and contrasting these various word processing applications. In terms of communicating more with the students, I am planning on exploring RCampus in more depth. This site provides not only rubric-generating resources but also a potential way for students to log in and see classroom progress, instead of waiting for me to hand something back to them. In addition, I'd love to find the time to try a Wiki for one of my classes. Last year, I was out for a couple of weeks for back surgery and so I created a Google Presentation and logged in during my class and conducted the presentation. My students absolutely loved it and were undoubtedly more tuned in than they would have been had I simply shown them the Powerpoint at school on the projector. To them, it was playtime, even though they were learning a great deal. I think they would find the same enjoyment if I created a Wiki. Since I'm the librarian, I could create a book club. This would be another way of communicating with my students on a regular basis. Another technology I plan on using this fall is our new Pixie Suite. This application allows the users to create everything from slideshows to podcasts and websites. This would be yet another great way for students to communicate to their families all the things we're doing in class. In addition, publishing their work would be a great way to provide recognition and feedback.

I'm very excited about all the changes I'll be making this fall. I have my work cut out for me, but investing the time is sure to produce results I had never dreamed of before and provide a much clearer direction for my curriculum.

Week Three-Online Tools Review

Like many others, my curriculum is almost composed entirely of online tools. Because of cost and issues with our server, I have looked more and more to cloud computing and finding effective, inexpensive teaching tools. My school does, however, still purchase software occasionally and five years ago purchased the Kidspiration and Inspiration software. Kidspiration, along with Bubbl.us and Exploratree.org offer three great options for creating and sharing graphic organizers.


I've worked with Kidspiration many times. The software is an excellent source not only for creating graphic organizers but also for the writing process. Students have the option of creating a graph from scratch or from numerous templates on a variety of topics. In addition, Kidspiration includes tons of pictures, or students may import one of their own. I like how easy the software is to use, and students of all ages enjoy the software. In addition, once students have created their graphic, they can select the outline option that automatically creates the outline of their graphic, thus making it easier for students to move into the writing process. Of the choices, I think Kidspiration is the best, but it also isn't cheap.

I also viewed Bubbl.us and Exploratree.org. Both have the capabilities of creating brainstorming graphic organizers, but I liked the huge variety of templates that Exploratree offered. Bubbl.us appears to be very useful when you want to create and print a quick organizer. The students could easily log in, and as a large group, the teacher could walk through the process step by step. Last year my school purchased a mobile lab, and this would be a wonderful site to use in the classroom with the laptops as a way to teach students how to take notes. Exploratree, unlike Bubbl, allows the user to either create his own graphic or select one from a list. In addition, each type of graphic organizer is explained and examples are given. Since I don't have very much experience with organizers, I really liked this site. Not only does it offer organizers, but the site itself is a sort-of brainstorming resource for teachers. Looking at the options gets me thinking how I might use them in my lessons.

During in-service this fall, I am charge of a technology day with my colleagues. I can't wait to show them these sites and add them to our school's Delicious account as resources. I'm pretty sure right now the teachers create their own organizers or copy ones from textbooks. They'll love using this site.

CeDo525: Electronic Student Response Technology Tools

When it comes to providing student feedback, in the past, I have created my own set of rubrics for various projects or have relied upon verbal feedback. My school does not provide a set of standards or tools that, so I have been left to develop them on my own. Honestly, because my students are so young and my typical role has been to teach students how to use computers, there hasn't been a great necessity for heavy grading. In fact, before I started at my school five years ago, computer classes did not give grades. Hence, the curriculum has been informative but a bit lacking in structure and goals, and so I have spent the last four years building a curriculum from scratch. Therefore, exploring the various online tools for student response has been fascinating. I'm sure many others in this course were already familiar with most of these sites, but I never realized the depth and wealth of tools some of these sites provide. Specifically, I explored Rubistar, iRubric, Quia and QuizStar, and although each provides numerous tools for the teachers, my recommendation is iRubric.

Both Rubistar and iRubric are free sites that allow teachers to create online rubrics. Both sites provide a gallery from which to choose, or allow the registered user to create one from scratch. In addition, both sites allow users to save, download, or print a rubric. Rubistar is perfect for teachers who don't have a lot of time to fuss over their rubric. Users may select from a variety of subject headings. Once a rubric is selected, the user simply chooses the category to be evaluated from a drop-down menu. Each criteria appears, according to the category selected. A nice feature of Rubistar is its editing feature that allows users to tweek and modify where necessary. Once finished, the rubric may be previewed and then saved or printed from there. iRubric does much of the same; however, iRubric is just a small part of RCampus - a free, online educational management system that gives teachers the ability to create classes, gradebooks, tutorials, and websites. Therefore, iRubric doesn't just create rubrics; it goes many steps farther and allows users to "test" a rubric and automatically compute scores. In addition, in terms of communication, RCampus is completely web-based so both teachers and students can access their information from anywhere and is an excellent source for providing feedback in all forms, not just rubrics. I can't wait to explore this site more and introduce it to my teachers in the fall as a way for them to post student work and communicate with both students and parents.

As their names suggest, both Quia and QuizStar give teachers a way to create quizzes online. Each provides a free trial, after which a paid subscription is required. Quia creates customized templates in a variety of forms, from traditional multiple-choice quizzes to interactive games, such as hangman or battleship. A nice feature of Quia is the teacher's ability to add audio, making it more suitable for students with varied learning capabilities. For teachers who don't have a lot of time, Quia also includes easy-to-use templates as well as a large gallery of shared quizzes from other teachers. Creating quizzes doesn't save time, however, if the teacher must then grade each one, so Quia also includes automatic grading and posting of results. A subscription to Quia is a bit hefty in my opinion, at $49 but might be worth it to the teacher whose student assessment requires this type of evaluation. QuizStar, powered by 4Teachers, the same creator of Rubistar, works much the same way but doesn't appear to have the flexibility and scope of Quia. Registered users may utilize the site for free for 60 days and then opt to subscribe for $39/year. Quizstar also automatically grades and posts student achievement but Quizstar's creative resources are very limited. Users are allowed to use other teacher quizzes but only with permission, provided by the creator in the form of a code. It sounds a bit too complicated. In addition, Quizstar's quizzes are basic, multiple-choice types of quizzes. There are no options for games or other activities that Quia provides. For my personal use, I found neither site very impressive and worth the annual subscription. The web offers many other choice polling-type tools, Survey Monkey being one, that accomplish the same goal. Although either site is an excellent way to provide student feedback, neither one justifies the expense.