December+2010

Technology is advancing so rapidly and there has been alot of changes in how we look at data storage. One of the biggest obstacles that we have as campus technology coordinators is helping teachers back up their data or tell them that all their personal data has been erased when a computer crashes. Most of the teachers I work with have learned from the past and keep their data on USB flash drives and other media however we all know that USB flash drives can also fail one day and most certainly can be lost easily. One way we have combated with this the issue of permanent data storage is cloud storage options. Personally, I have made my flash drives obsolete and have decided to keep all my personal and important data on the cloud. In my opinion, the best online storage option is Dropbox. Since the introduction to Dropbox, I can honestly say that it is one service I cannot live without. In this activity, I introduced Dropbox to the entire school, teachers, administrators and support staff. I created a tutorial PDF on how to sign up and get started with Dropbox. I utilized print screen options and Microsoft Word to compile the PDF file. Unfortunately after creating the file, I discovered that Dropbox actually has their own high quality step by step tutorials available for use on their webpage so I decided to use their literature instead. Certainly of the biggest reasons for using this service as the title indicates was to minimize local hard drive usage and promote the use of cloud services for anytime access to important documents. I dissiminated this information via email including the PDF file, video tutorial links and an open invitation to a personal tutorial if they wish. I had several teachers inquire and I actually visited their classroom to install the desktop icon and the mobile app for their smartphone. All in all, I had about 10 teachers sign up and start using this service. I'm confident that other teachers will soon follow and jump on the bandwagon. I have found that installing the desktop icon for teachers makes it much easier for them to save their documents rather than visiting dropbox.com and uploading the documents. I also obtained the assistance from my mentoree Ector Lopez to try to assist teachers with the signup/setup of Dropbox service. Most of the accounts were setup during conference and personal lunch period. We answered specific questions and helped teachers transfer their documents from PC or USB flash drive onto their Dropbox account. I believe that his activity was related to and helped me master the following standards/indicators: TF-I.A.2. / TF-I.B.1. In this activity we (Ector and I) provided teachers with an ongoing development of knowledge, skills and understanding of technology resources that can play a vital role in becoming a more productive educator. Those teachers who seeks personal assistance received a modeled method of these technology tools and obtained a better understanding of technology operations and concepts.
 * Week 1: 12/1/2010 - 12/4/2010: Get The Load Off Your PC**

Sources: Dropbox Simplify Your Life - Help. (n.d.). //Dropbox Simplify Your Life//. Retrieved November 30, 2010, from www.dropbox.com/help

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.

Although the focus of this course was on the Week 4 newsletter assignment, I have to say that this course was exciting and engaging for me as a student. It brought out creative and innovative side of me. It definitely took me out of my comfort zone. For example, In week 2 we had the opportunity to create a logo that described our personality. I utilized several resources in the creation of the logo. First, I used Facebook to ask friends to use words that describe me. By the way, this was the first time I had ever used a social network to gather information for research. I was astounded by the number of responses I received by my friends on Facebook. Then I reflected on how I perceived myself and what my goals were. I used logoease.com service to create my logo. I was so impressed with this activity that I even used it with my Keyboarding class. This class changed the way I look at advertisements and logos.
 * Week 2: 12/5/2010 - 12/11/2010: EDLD Week 4 Newsletter Design**

I learned to use the four design principles CRAP in both the logo and newsletter design for week 4. In week 4 we put all of our learning together and created a four-page newsletter. I admit that I did not follow the instructions. I decided instead to promote my CTE department and create a newsletter for teachers, students and parents rather than create an educational technology resources newsletter as instructed. My newsletter included teacher biographies, career clusters, resources and other interesting data. I have created a newsletter before however this was the first time I used design principles to create a visually appealing newsletter. This assignment was very time consuming but fun nonetheless. I used Word 2011 for Mac to design the newsletter. The templates in this version were significantly better than those found in Keynote and FrontPage. My colleagues were very impressed with the way the newsletter turned out. In fact, I collaborated with our Spanish teacher so that I could create a Spanish version of the newsletter. This was important because our school district is a predominantly Hispanic community. My CTE teachers were very supportive in the newsletter creation process and provided me resources and biographical information. They were even kind enough to take a picture! They hate taking pictures. One major concern I had with this assignment was reaching the Spanish-speaking parents. Since I worked so hard on the newsletter, I feel like the Spanish version was not as well versed. The biggest concern that I had about this was course was that the major assignment was to create a newsletter using desktop publishing software. I think that other EDLD 5366 students, including myself would of benefited greater if the major assignment was a multimedia project with sound, words, and pictures. We spent a lot of time learning about multimedia learning in education yet the assignment was not aligned to multimedia learning principles. Let’s say that we had made presentation with text, animation and narration, we could have accomplished the basic principles. According to the research “a narrated animation that balances the presentation of content between the animation and the narration (and keeps the amount of text to a minimum) is more likely to be effective” (Understanding Multimedia Learning, 2008, p. 5). This course was obviously designed to help us improve our personal technology skill but we must always consider our students and their learning experiences. I believe that learning these skills from this class will help us model these technologies to other teachers and students. Next time I present to a group of students, I must consider using photos, videos and images to help improve the presentation and help them learn the content. After all, “research has shown that moving images can help students to improve the retention of concepts, facilitate thinking and problem solving” (WestEd RTEC, 2004).

Something unique about this course compared to all the others was the learning materials we used to learn the concepts. In most courses we utilized scholarly written articles and textbooks, however in this course we utilized open content. This was the first time I did an assignment purely on the instructions from someone’s blog. We used //lealea’s blog// to learn design and logo creation concepts. The blog was written in expository format and helped me understand the concepts much easier. It goes to show that learning can be very effective using other forms of reference tools. It worked for me!

The creation of the 4-page newsletter aligns with ISTE Standards of Technology Leadership (TF/TL-V.D.) “Use technology to communicate and collaborate with peers, parents, and the larger community in order to nurture student learning” (Williamson & Redish, 2009, p. 113). More specifically I practiced standard (TF-V.D.4.), “Design and developed a newsletter that supports communication between school and the community” (Williamson & Redish, 2009, p. 113).

Sources: Understanding Multimedia Learning: Integrating Multimedia in the K12 Classroom. (2008, September). Retrieved from http://www.brainpop.com/new_ common_images/files/76/76426_BrainPOP_White_Paper-20090426.pdf

WestEd Regional Technology in Education Consortium (RTEC). (2004). Technology tips for differentiated instruction. Retrieved from http://rtecexchange.edgateway.net/cs/rtecp/view/rtec_files/123

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.

One of the most obvious flaws that you'll notice is that this survey has been given almost 4 months after the start of the internship. This type of survey needed to have been given at the beginning of the internship as a blueprint or guide to how to plan my activities. Nonetheless, this week I decided to disseminate a campus wide survey to all classroom teachers using Google Docs. More specifically I used Google Forms to create a survey or questionnaire in an effort to evaluate teachers use of technology. At first, I created a completely multiple choice questionnaire but decided to included a variety of methods included scale and text (short answer) to allow teachers to input what could be valuable information. The survey was designed in mind to discover the frequency of use of technology, methods of use and identify most commonly used technology tools and resources. In the latter part of the survey, I also included a section that helped me discover what type of technology tools and resources teachers would like to learn or see on campus. The survey itself was not the most important part of this activity rather the results and the data I gathered. I discovered that the educators on my campus believe that using a projector and document reader alone suffices and is considered a high technology classroom. In other words, they were confused or misinformed on the types of technology uses available. Some educators responded that they see technology as too troublesome and faulty at times and would rather not use technology in the classroom due to the technical difficulties that occur often.I am glad that I decided to include a short answer option because I learned that various educators actually use many web based tools to teach the curriculum. The teachers enjoy using web based curriculum due to the ease of use, options available and the level of cognitive thinking that many of the activities are designed in. I intend to use these activities to plan out and work on the rest of the activities in this internship. I believe that his activity was related to and helped me master the following standards/indicators: TF-V.B.1. / TF-V.C.6. / TF-V.C.7. In creating and disseminating the survey I used a popular communication tool to conduct useful research that will play a pivotal role in the course of the internship. Also, Google Docs allowed me as the author to create a distributable only survey to support my personal technology development.
 * Week 3: 12/12/2010 - 12/18/2010: Google Docs Survey on Technology Use In The Classroom**

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.

Week 4: 12/19/2010 - 12/25/2010 No school/ Holidays

No school/ Holidays
 * Week 5: 12/26/2010 - 12/31/2010**