First Course (of many) that really made me feel like a fish-out-of-water!

Looking at online storage, tearing apart computers, researching virus protection, learning how to blog... these things have all been interesting to learn and will set me up well for future courses in this degree program. But this class has shown me that the easy days are gone and it's time for me to try to think like the teacher that I one day hope to become. Interacting with my group of librarian-types and teachers showed me how far I have to go and how much I have to learn. Their ability to imagine the difficulties and rewards of implementing technologies into the classroom setting was eye-opening.

The group projects were a great part of this class as it was very interesting to hear the trials and tribulations from individuals who are actively attempting to implement many of the ideas and technologies that we've discussed in this (and preceding) courses. Issues like crowded classrooms, special needs and ELL coupled with school boards and money concerns are not things that I routinely think about.

I have mixed reviews on the text. I enjoyed the reading and the abundance of online examples, sample lessons and discussions on the various tools available to teachers. I did not enjoy the style of questions that the text employed. I guess it's the engineer in me looking for concrete solutions not completely open-ended queries.

Learning about additional online tools such as Google Sites and Calendar was interesting. I can see how these features could easily lends themselves to the classroom setting. 

CEdO515 Session 5

In this blog entry I am to respond to the question: How does what we are studying affect how you are teaching - what did we cover this week and how does it impact you? Short answer is that it won't affect my teaching as I am not yet teaching (enough of this excuse, yes?). What we did this week was look at Google Sites, review a video on creativity (and how schools appear to be killing it), conduct an analysis of available learning software evaluation tools (followed by conducting our own evaluation of a relevant learning aid using the chosen tool) as well as a reading assignment.

The Google Sites activity has been fun although the product isn't yet looking all that interesting or user-friendly. I'm sure that future tweeks will be needed to make it useful and informative. I can definitely see how this function of Google could be beneficial to teacher, students and parents. This could also assist in finding "authentic audiences" for reviewing and commenting on students' work.

I liked the video on today's schooling affecting students creativity. Although, not actually being a teacher, I'm not sure how I would feel about that being dropped at my feet. With budget cuts and other limitations, it's easy to imagine how hard it is to recognize and foster one child's imagination and creativity when those very things are prevention you from conducting the normal lesson for the other 25 students!

We will be discussing the evaluation tools later on today, so I don't have too much to say about that aspect of our homework assignments at this time. Most of the checklists that I looked at seemed fairly easy to use. I look forward to conducting an evaluation on some online physics learning programs to see the tool in action.

Integrating New Technologies Into the Methods of Education (INTIME)

For this week's blog entry we were asked to look at the online tools available through the INTIME searchable database (http://www.intime.uni.edu/). I chose a lesson plan that represents what I would like to see myself teaching once my current career is finished - High School Physics. 

I've included the information for the lesson plan (along with the associated links).
Video: Relating to Newton's Second Law
Teacher: Robert Munson
Grade: 12
School: Grundy Center High School, Grundy Center, Iowa
Activity Overview: Students study the relationship between the three variables in Newton's Second Law. By designing an experiment the students test relationships among the variables.
Learning: Active Involvement, Patterns and Connections, Reflection
Information Processing: Presearch, Search, Interpretation
Content Area: Science
Democracy: Critical Thinking and Decision Making, Thinking Together and Making Meaning, Power Sharing and Empowerment
Technology: Instructional Software, Trouble-Shooting
Teacher Knowledge: Knowledge of Student Characteristics, Teachers In-Depth Content Knowledge
Teacher Behavior: Classroom Management
Date: 2000-05-02
Software: Vernier Package
Hardware: Photogates, ULI interface, Computer

While I like the teacher's stated purpose of allowing the students to devise the plan for conducting the experiment, I would hope that this lesson would fall well into the school year so that the teacher would have an idea of the students' strengths and weaknesses when it comes to semi-non-guided lessons.

I liked the fact that the lesson included Direct Experience & Critical Thinking and Decision Making as well as many other stated learning objectives (see the Lesson Plan information to the right of the video section for more standards discussion).

This Week's Work... Spreadsheet, Software Evaluations, etc.

This week's schoolwork included exercises in spreadsheet usage, software evaluation and the reading assignments.

The online spreadsheet program (google docs) that I used for the recipe assignment is easy to use and contains all of the simple functions that I am experienced with from all of my excel usage. The magic square exercise was a fun, quick, sudoku-like game... good times! I am pretty confident in my spreadsheet skills. I have years of experience in manipulating data, creating interconnected worksheets and creating intelligent training plans for marathons and the like. The most interesting use of spreadsheets that I have been involved with was during grad school where we used excel to create ship models (waterline aspects, transverse cross-sections, longitudinal sections, etc.). That was probably the most labor intensive project that I have ever used spreadsheets to complete.

As for the software evaluation, I can see how the ability to evaluate the cost/benefits of any new technology feature would be beneficial. However, I don't have the luxury in my current profession (and actually, from our group work, it seems that most teachers don't get to choose the software that they work with either) of making any changes to my computer's software package. I jokingly stated that my computer is a mysterious black box that sits on my desk and, for the most part, does the necessary functions to make me productive (word, email, excel, ppt, etc.). Of course, being a military system, it is also loaded with numerous interesting programs that assist us in completing personnel evaluations, managing purchase requests, monitoring our personal data (important for promotions and next duty assignments!), filling out travel claims, etc. The majority of these programs are either contracted out or are in-house creations (written by own very own USCG geeks in some hidden corner of DC!). Sometimes new versions of our in-house programs just appear on our machines and we receive a message with a "helpful" (sarcasm intended) ppt presentation to walk us through the new program.

That's all for this week. See you all on Tuesday... I'll be heading over to the snowy side of the Lake so I am hoping that no giant storms come through early this week to make my travels more difficult than they need be.

Websearches, Word Processing and the History of the Internet

This week's work has been interesting. Learning about the history of the Internet and seeing some of the current endeavors of Google was eye-opening (and I'm pretty sure that I'll be switching to Google Chrome very soon!). Getting some serious schooling on how to conduct more pointed and specific websearches was pretty fun too. I liked the features of Exalead and will probably start using it more than yahoo (but I am still partial to my Google searching!).

Being able to finish up work on these assignments from my hotel rooms in Chicago and Cancun this week really shows how beneficial online document creation, interactive meeting programs and the rest of the cloud can be for working professionals. Many of the key features of these online tools will also be very useful for teachers. These tools will allow for collaboration with student teams, inclusion of guest lecturers from wherever they are at the time, etc.


The informative movie on the history of the internet was very enlightening. I had never really heard the history of the internet and it was interesting to see how several different systems came together to create it. The idea a packets of information was not new to me but it was fun to see who came up with it and when!

I look forward to tuning in to Tuesday's class meeting from here in Mexico. I hope that my connection stays up.

Using Productivity Tools Effectively

I am hoping that this course will make me a more effective/efficient user of many of the installed and internet-based versions of common programs (Word processing, spreadsheets, presentation creators, etc.). I consider myself fairly adept at using some of the less commonly used features of Excel and Word (integrated spreadsheet creation, working on/creating document templates with dropdown boxes and the like). I look forward to seeing where this course is taking us.

As usual at the beginning of these courses, I do wonder what impact this information will have on my current non-teaching job. I believe that it will be easier to implement the things that I am learning to my home computing vice my workplace usage. We shall see!

From the reading assignment thus far I've been learning about what technology should mean in the classroom setting. Also, I liked the discussion on the fact that there is no one perfect way to teach all students.