January+2011

No activity
 * Week 1: 1/1/2011 - 1/8/2011**

I remember the old fashioned method of pressing PRINT SCREEN and copying over screenshots to Microsoft Word then adding arrows and text. It was a very effective way of delivering instructions for professional development and tutorials for students in the classroom. Today we have an even better way of communicating whats on our screens that can be done in a faster more effective way. In my small CTE department, I am always sharing tools and resources teachers can use to enhance their teaching skills. In this activity I trained Mr. David Gonzalez (Careers) and Ms. Jessica Lopez (Technology Applications) on how to use an open source tool called Camstudio to create tutorials for their students. Although this appealed more to Ms. Lopez who is constantly instructing students, Mr. Gonzalez also discovered way to teach his students on how to search through job banks using this tool. Camstudio, along with other free and paid applications such as Jing and Camstasia, can be used in a multitude of ways. Teachers can use it to enhance their presentation skills and wow their audiences during professional development and trainings. Both teachers were impressed on how easy it was to record their screens and how it exported the content into mp4 or avi files. Mr. Gonzalez did voice that in order for the screenshots to be of better quality, they must be trimmed and edited using software such as Windows Movie Maker. Of course, I agree that it does require some further work to polish the final product. Since the video is already in an easy to use format, teachers or students can quickly transfer content to Windows Movie Maker and add their own voice for narrations and certainly add text or other transitions to increase value. Overall, teachers enjoyed learning about screencasting tools and have already started creating their first tutorial for their classroom. I intend to follow up and show them how to upload their finished product to their teacher web page or to a video hosting website such as Teacher Tube or YouTube. I believe that his activity was related to and helped me master the following standards/indicators: TF-V.C.2. / TF-I.A.1. / TF-I.A.2. /TF-II.F.1. Screencasting is a very useful tool and I assisted my fellow educators on how to locate, select and integrate screencasted video to be used for presentations, tutorials and other products for self improvement, classroom instruction and professional development purposes.
 * Week 2: 1/9/2011 - 1/15/2011: Screencasting for Better Instructions and Presentatons**

Sources: Williamson, J., & Redish, T. (2009). //ISTE's technology facilitation and leadership standards: what every K-12 leader should know and be able to do//. Eugene,OR: International Society for Technology in Education.

It has now been half of a year in my internship and graduate program and it is time to evaluate the effectiveness of a couple of Web 2.0 tools that have been piloted and used in my keyboarding (touch data systems entry) 8th grade classes during semester 1. This reflections and accompanying opinions are based on my observations through student assignments. The first Web 2.0 tool used was Google Docs. At the beginning of the semester all of my students are required to create a GMail account which will give them access to a wide variety of Google products and services. We utilized Google Docs for web page idea brainstorming and we created a website in teams using GoogleSites. I was very impressed with the level of creativity and attention to detail the students used when instructed to start from scratch rather than use the templates. I remember this one student created a very realistic copy of Hollister clothing store. In the assignment I asked students to create a store that sold whatever they like. The idea was to mirror and take ideas from popular websites. In no time students were up and running and even asked further higher level questions like "If this was a real web site, how do we charge our customer" or "what would happen if they wanted to ship to two different places". It started stimulating questions that most online retailers and web designers are faced with daily. I asked my students to also create a Blogger account to reflect and write a journal type entry about their experience in keyboarding and using GoogleSites. I was surprised to see that many of the students shut down on me. They wrote in poor grammar despite the spell check and the entries were rather short. I attribute that to my lack of instructions and vague expectations of the entries. In my next encounter, I will be more specific on the expectations and even include a rubric for grading on the Blog. On a positive note, students did really well when using Animoto. They quickly added photos, music, text and even copied the html code to their Blogger page with very little teacher assistance. In most instances, a student was willing to help other struggling students to embed their final product. This was a true sign of classroom collaboration. I learned that students presented higher quality work when dealing with digital media such as photos, text, and videos as opposed to simple text publishing. I tend to believe that the reason why this would occur is that the simple text publishing is too closely related to old fashioned writing which most students oppose to doing and dread. As soon as they were challenged with more difficult multimedia tasks not only did they do better but they were willing to help others and share their knowledge. So the question is "do Web 2.0 tools belong in classrooms?" The results from my first semester clearly indicate that higher multimedia projects with more engagement will produce higher quality work and higher level thinking. In short, yes they definitely belong in schools. I believe that his activity was related to and helped me master the following standards/indicators: TF-VIII.A.1. / TF-V.B.1. / TF-IV.C.2. / TF-III.A.1. / TF-III.A.7. / TF-III.D.1. This continuous activity most closely resembles that of TF-IV.C.2. where I have examined and applied the results of a research project (technology in the classroom) that included evaluating a specific technology (web 2.0 tools) in a K-12 environment.
 * Week 3: 1/16/2011 - 1/22/2011: Web 2.0 Tools Effectiveness Reflection**

Sources: Williamson, J., & Redish, T. (2009). //ISTE's technology facilitation and leadership standards: what every K-12 leader should know and be able to do//. Eugene,OR: International Society for Technology in Education.

Some much needed time away from the classroom couldn't come at a better time. This week we met for a quick CTC meeting where the focus of the meeting was to review the itinerary for TCEA coming up in a few weeks. In this trip we have 7 campus technology coordinators attending and 2 district techs. We discussed the sleeping arrangements and filled out meal reimbursement forms beforehand. Of course we also discussed fun stuff like what socials we are going to attend, which nightclubs we will meet at and other entertainment activities. I just can't wait to get to Austin and see all the new technology advancements in equipment and software for K-12 markets. In this meeting, led by Mr. Roland Handy, we also learned about Subfinder, a substitute teacher calling service. Mr. Roland Handy had been hinting lately that our district may be buying into this hype and start using this service. He mentioned that he had seen this service used in our neighboring district and that many of the campuses have been satisfied with the service. For now that is all the information he gave us. He is trying to negotiate a pricing for our district with that company. Last on the agenda dealt with library Destiny circulation program. Since many of the CTC's are also librarians, it was appropriate to discuss this in the meeting. Basically, our district will be switching over to a new and improved version of Destiny Library Manager with new RF scanners for every campus. I really don't know too much about this software or how it works exactly but I did relay this news to our current librarian who was excited about the update but annoyed with the amount of work that it may bring. I believe that his activity was related to and helped me master the following standards/indicators: TF-VII-A.3. / TF-VII-A.8. / TF-VII.B.3. / TF-VII.B.4. / TF-VII-B.5. / TF-VIII-D.7. / TF-VI.E.1. I'd have to say that these meeting in general help me master Standard VII because it involves a high deal of planning for infrastructure, hardware, software, updating policies, procedures involving district and campus technology needs that affect the classrooms and the front lines of our schools.
 * Week 4: 1/23/2011 - 1/29/2011: CTC Monthly Meeting**

Sources: Williamson, J., & Redish, T. (2009). //ISTE's technology facilitation and leadership standards: what every K-12 leader should know and be able to do//. Eugene,OR: International Society for Technology in Education.

No activity
 * Week 5: 1/30/2011 - 1/31/2011**