Short and Sweet..but worth the mention....

Upon continuing this unit, the following resonated with me:

When building a multimedia activity, it is important to include an interactive activity after 5 or 6 screens. In this manner you can asses formatively the students' progress and bring their focus back to what's important. It also allows a moment to "change the water on the beans" so students continue to stay motivated!

The Apple Learning Interchange looks like a very good resource. I’m looking forward to spending more time checking it out. Apple always provides information of the highest quality and creativity and always seem to have educators in mind. Podcasta allow me to multi-task while listening, so that is always a big advantage to a resource in my mind!

The E-Learning Site Usability Checklist as posted in the course content looks to be very relevant and complete. I will try and make the effort to apply this checklist to our own site. I think there's a lot of little things there that can be easily taken for granted. I hope we don't!

Additional Resources

Here is my posting from our class site:

I had an interesting experience in a school recently that I wanted to share. I was doing some modeling (integrating technology into teaching) at a small school recently and the topic was mental math. I had shown a couple of ideas to the teacher and the class, and noticed one little boy at the back who just couldn’t sit still.

I’ve since learned that he is autistic. He rocks and shakes his hands and is up from his desk quite often. Anhow…the last site I shared with the class is from iknowthat.com called “Leon’s Dojo”. It’s a math game that features Leon (iguana?) and some punching bags (not other characters :). Numbers appear on the bags and when the equation pops up, you have to make Leon hit the appropriate bag. You get the picture, I’m sure. Students are scored on accuracy and time and have to complete one level before moving on to the next. For this particular demonstration, I had the smartboard hooked up. I asked one student to demonstrate, and the whole class loved it.

Our time was up, so the students had lined up to go, when this little boy (mentioned earlier) came up to me and asked me if he could try the game. I asked his teacher if it would be ok, and she agreed. The kid took on his best karate pose at the smartboard and proceeded to get every single question right!! While he was playing, there was absolutely no ticking of any kind. I’d never seen anything like it. I wish I had it on film! Next thing I knew, another boy who wasn’t able to do the math himself was playing the game, looking to the first boy for the answers. Very cool.

Iknowthat.com-has a lot of good resources in general…but here’s the game. Ideal for an activity to break up the class or to have the kids working in centers. http://www.iknowthat.com/com?COOK=

My favorite resource site for French resources involves the use of a text with keywords and this site…can even download images. Mostly used by the teacher, but lots of resources to share with students. http://encyclopedia.erpi.com/

I like these on-line books…especially the french ones. Great review activities afterwards! I just applied for a free trial…use my username “russechd” and the password is “trial”. Would be great for centers or targeting learners who slip outside your main focus.
http://www.tumblebooks.com/library/asp/home_tumblebooks.asp

The more work I do, the more I love National Geographic. Use the site below for teaching weather, but we use the games with our classes to reinforce learning and I’ve used this site several times during my research for our global warming webquest. Amazing stuff..always well done and relevant! I use it mostly for presenting information or reviewing what we have already learned so that the students can see how it applies.http://www.nationalgeographic.com/forcesofnature/interactive/index.html?section=h

Learning Styles:

After taking the tests posted in our coursework, I quickly deduced that my new name should be Miss Kinesthetic!

I posted these comments in the course discussion area:

I just had a funny experience with the Learning Styles
Inventory. I had been on-line for a while and had just started to get into the quiz when I jumped up and took a quick break to grab a drink, some chips and a pen. Then as I continued through the questions, I was asked "Do you fidget while studying?"
and found that I was flipping my pen around my fingers (a habit I picked up in university which I often revert back to when reading/studying).

The next question asked me about snacking...I answered that one with a mouthful of chips...and then somewhere in there it pegged me with the break I had taken to get the chips.

Guess I'm a cookie-cutter tactile learner..leaning slightly towards the auditory side.

When I looked a the tips, I found that I employed a lot them
during my schooling. Things that really resonated with me were drawing words out in the air and reciting things out loud with the study cards in hand. I had a roommate in university who always wrote out her vocabulary/bio definitions/etc a million times. I tried to follow suit, thinking "she must know what she's doing, her Mom's a
teacher" and became very frustrated very quickly.

So, while she locked herself in the study cell to write things out, I was back in the room, talking to myself, begging for someone else to talk the material over with. Funny how I thought that the way I did it was "wrong".

I love the study hints posted at this site!
http://www.berghuis.co.nz/abiator/lsi/lsitactstra.html

=> To memorise, pace or walk around while reciting to yourself or using flashcards or notes.

=> When reading a short story or chapter in a book, try a whole-to-part approach. This means you should first scan the pictures, then read headings, then read the first and last paragraphs and try to get a feel for the book. You could also try skim-reading the chapter or short story backwards, paragraph-by-paragraph.

=> If you need to fidget, try doing so in a way which will not disturb others of endager yourself or others. Try jiggling your legs or feet, try hand/finger exercises, or handle a koosh ball, tennis ball or something similar.

=> You might not study best while at a desk. Try lying on your stomach or back. Try studying while sitting in a comfortable lounge chair or on cushions or a bean bag.

=> Studying with music in the background might suit you (baroque music is best - as opposed to heavily rhythm-based music).

=> Use coloured contruction paper to cover your desk or even decorate your area. Choose your favourite colour as this will help you focus. This technique is called colour grounding.

=> Try reading through coloured transparencies to help focus your attention. Try a variety of colours to see which colours work best.

=> While studying, take frequent breaks, but be sure to settle back down to work quickly. A reasonable schedule would be 15-25 minutes of study, 3-5 minutes of break time.

=> When trying to memorise information, try closing your eyes and writing the information in the air or on a surface with your finger. Try to picture the words in your head as you are doing this. Try to hear the words in your head, too.

Later, when you try to remember this information, close your eyes and try to see it with your mind's eye and to hear it in your head.

=> When learning new information, make task cards, flashcards, electro-boards, card games, floor games, etc. This will help you process the information.

Check out the site for yourself and see how you make out!
Abiator's Learning Styles Inventory

Evaluating Multimedia:

I just took a look at the evaluation for our project and I think we are presently doing a great job on most fronts. I think we need to add a sitemap as I know it is a component that I use often when trying to navigate once I’m lost. That would be one thing that I like about using Frontpage, it creates the sitemap for you.

I think we did a great job on the creativity portion. We chose something that is relevant to where kids are today. I think the structure is good as is, or could be easily morphed to meet the needs of the students involved.

Visual literacy is going to be an area I need to work on, personally. I didn’t score so well on the on-line test and I guess it has become more apparent to me that images are important. They must add to the information presented and not distract from the meaning. The same thing holds true for PowerPoint presentations. I read a good blog on PowerPoint recently that housed a great video on “powerpoint extreme makeover”. Too often we get caught up in the animations and “fancy stuff” and we forget how to created presentations that are thought provoking and communicate the desired message.

Please click HERE to see the blog afformentioned.

Oh the times..they are a-changing....

In the past couple of years I’ve seen huge changes!!

In NB, all teachers have Notebook computers..I think this has been the catalyst for change. This past year has seen a major shift. Teachers have notebooks, large pockets of students have them as well. We also have wireless access (thin in some cases, but present), and we presently are working in Professional Learning Communities. The primary focus this year is on Common Assessments.

I think in my position as a Mentor, my largest focus will be in working with Administrators to create a technology plan with SMART goals to take inventory of what the schools have and where they want to go. Within that focus, I see me setting up training sessions to teach schools (not just interested individuals) to use the Portal to increase efficiency and communication in schools.

I’m not sure if you all have a Portal where you are, so I’ll expand a bit on this. The Portal is a sharepoint site within the firewall that allows for a common provincial workspace, as well as several sub spaces for schools and curricular teams. The new version (should be on-line by this spring) will allow student access to the Portal, as well as the addition of Blogs, Wikis and the ability to RSS feed.

The other thing I need to try and do is to stay focused! There is so much out there right now and really, not much direction comes to Mentors as far as the specifics go. I think it is very important that I stick to the school’s Tech Plan and the agenda of the PLC. I would rather do a top notch job at fewer initiatives/ideas, than a half baked effort at numerous initiatives. It is essential to stay focused on teaching and learning and not just on what’s new and exciting. (funny..I'm on my way to a meeting so that we can clearly define what are the essential technology learnings for our teachers, students and admin...should be a good discussion!)

The Best Tech PD Ever!

Jumping in a bit to the Unit 4 discussions....

We ran some really effective PD sessions last year in our district...they were 1-on-1.

We booked a supply teacher for a day and teachers would sign up for a particular
period. The supply teacher hopped from room to room (really earned their money that
day) and we (teacher and mentor) got to work in a relaxed, unintimidating environment
where teachers got to put their hands on the actual equipment and do whatever it was
that they wanted to do.

We got a lot done with teachers who really wanted to learn. I'm hoping to get the chance (funds permitting) to do it again this year! "Regular PD" involves a lot of money! Supply teachers, mileage, lunch, snacks, and often at the cost of a lot of irrelevant time and little in the way of action. I think it is very important that teachers leave a PD session with something they can use!

Storyboards

When I read the information regarding storyboards, it put me in mind of a project I have been involved with recently where teachers are trying to tie in BBT (Broad Base Technology) components with Science. The students are studying mitosis and meiosis and were required to create a scenario to animate that would include one of these processes.

Claymation is an activity that takes a fair amount of planning, but I really think this was more complex a task than either teacher had imagined. I’m a bit of stickler on content, so before I allowed the students to even touch a piece of clay or a camera, I had them completely map there whole idea out in a storyboard, detailing the major components of their animation including how many different models they would require, transitions, titles, etc. I’m not sure that the teachers appreciated this addition to their project at first, but through the storyboards they were able to tell that the students really weren’t ready to move on. The science teacher reviewed some of the key components. Once the storyboards had been signed off by their science teacher, I then permitted them to begin with the technology.

There are tons of great templates for storyboards available through this course and on-line. They may take a bit of time to build from scratch, but they are easily edited to fit new ideas and are well worth the time in the long run!