Week 14 Review and Reflect

Here is the link to my Prezi Presentation

Week 13 Keystone Lesson Plan

Link to Keystone Lesson Plan

Rubric for Keystone Lesson

Keystone Implementation Report

Keystone Reflection

Week 12 Glogster

Screenshot of Glogster - Free Version (limited)

Educational Affordances of Glogster:

• It offers easy access of information to teachers and students who have internet access.
• It can be used from laptops, iPads and other devices.
• It can be used in assessment and enhancing instruction of certain topics.
• Glogster is very diverse. 
• It is a multimedia tool which utilizes music, audio, video, animation, images, drawings, and text.
• It is great for collaboration and group projects.  
• Students can work together and with their teacher to create glogs on any topic.
• Teachers & students can view archived images, pictures, texts, and art done by others.
• It offers support to students with learning difficulties. Students can get tasks done more efficiently.
• It is a great tool for visual learners.
• It can be used for lessons, homework assignments, and scaffolding.
• There are a variety of learning tasks that can be accomplished.
• New material can be introduced with Glogster.

For ELA teachers, the teachers can create glogs to structure a complex lesson:

It frees up more time for the teacher to provide support to students.

Students can create posters to display their writing and creativity.

They can demonstrate their mastery of course content.

They can include listening activities and review material as needed.

Week 11 Assignment #2

Link to My VoiceThread Lesson

Please edit, annotate, or comment! Thanks!!

Week 11 Assignment #1

VoiceThread Article Reflection:

Technology plays a major role in education today. There are many new tools that are engaging and collaborative for the classroom environment. One of these tools is VoiceThread. VoiceThread is a great tool for ICT in the classrooms for general ed and special education students.  For special education students that struggle with classwork and completing work on time, VoiceThread can be used to keep the student motivated. The VoiceThread interface and the features that it has are great for promoting student engagement and helps the students develop as an independent learner. VoiceThread allows many students to communicate and collaborate around a variety of topics.  The article discusses the flexibility VoiceThread. One of the flexible features of VoiceThread is that it can be used for whole class, small group, or independent instruction. Also, because the tool is web-based, it can be used in a classroom at home or anywhere else there is internet. VoiceThread also archives conversations and images to be accessed at a later time. Students can revisit topics and can use the technology over and over again for so many different purposes. VoiceThread can also be used across so many different grade levels and different content areas that it makes it a great tool for teachers to advance their curriculum. It can be used in language arts, science, math, social studies, and many other areas. Students become active users when using VoiceThread with their peers and this involvement makes it such a great collaborative tool.  It also allows students to work at their own pace and feel more comfortable with their assignments. It can make the work less overwhelming for a student and give them added Independence.

Week 10 Assignment #1

Link to Video - New Literacies in School

Week 9 Assignment #1

The article on "The impact of using blogs on college students

reading comprehension and learning motivation"

was very interesting and surprising to me. I would have

thought that using blogs would have more impact on improving

reading skills, reading performance and motivation but it did not.

It did however, affect the retention rate of students withdrawing

during the semester.  Less students withdrew from the class and

the instructors believed that this was because the interaction

among students in the blogging groups was much greater than

in the control group. It was interesting to see that students who

did not feel comfortable expressing their opinions in class tended

to discuss more controversial issues on blogs and in the classroom.

So the blogs became an equalizer enabling all kinds of students to

express comprehension and share their opinions outside of the in

class discussions. The blogging students would also use blogs to

explore conversation topics that were of concern. It helped some

students with assignments, school learning, life as a college student

and friendship and family issues. I feel like this enhancement and

interaction is something that not only pertains to college students

but even younger grades as well.  When I was younger, I was always

afraid to ask questions, so I believe blogging would have been a

great benefit. For me, the important thing to take away from this

article is how teachers perceived the blog and were not really ready

to embrace everything that the technology had to offer. Professional

development is definitely needed to help integrate technology into

the college context and college teachers need to have the

technology skills and pedagogical training that is necessary. It would

also be interesting to redo this study in about 5 to 10 years to see if

using blogs has increased in the college classroom and what the

outcome on students will be.