Journal+Entries+Summer+2010

__**﻿ **__** __ Summer Semester 2010 __ **** May/June portion June 9, 2010 The first portion of the summer semester has just ended and at this time I need to record my thoughts about what has transpired during these last five weeks. I am very disappointed to say the least with the education or lack thereof that I’ve received over these weeks. I am mostly upset about the way in which Tom Fullerton handled the explanation of what we were intended to do over the months of May and June. Initially, the class was told in late April that we were required to be at all five classes and we were to develop a learning object to present to our mentor group at the culmination of these sessions. The class was not pleased to say the least and we debated this decision for an hour one night in April. Tom told us there was nothing he could do and that the powers that be at SFU dictated that we be in session for 20 hours. I was devastated when I heard this news. I had just finished a gruelling term and presented another field study. This was not the news I was expecting. I assumed, as many others did that we were on a hiatus until late August. I was completely demoralized. I couldn’t imagine the effort it would take to come to class, put in the time and complete the assignments. Furthermore, this was also affecting my home life. Randy would have to be the sole caregiver for five straight nights. This was another huge burden on him. Psychologically, emotionally and physically I was drained. My body shut down. I began to get sick and I’ve only gotten sicker since. It is now June 9 and I am still battling a bad cough and cold. I also had a bout of the flu and pink eye. And really, it was all for nought. In the end we didn’t need to show up for five weeks. We didn’t even really need to show up for any of the classes as some of my class mates decided to do. Tonight we went to Kwayquitlam School to “check in” and there were only six people who showed up. Where were the rest? Wisely at home or elsewhere. It’s really a joke. A farce actually. I’m annoyed, perturbed, frustrated, and angry beyond belief. Why can’t he get this LTT thing right? I think he spends far too much time on the computer communicating to a screen rather than to real live humans. He’s forgotten what it means to have a syllabus, a plan an outline that we stick to. This would never fly with any other graduate work. Why do we have to put up with it. **** The long and short of it is that he has lost the respect of our class. We are jumping through the hoops and nothing else. I can’t wait to be done with these courses and finally get on with my life. **  __**Journal Entry on Creating Podcasts **__ May 26, 2010

Today I looked into creating a podcast and I was overwhelmed at the process. I really had no idea what was involved, and now I see that it will be a bit more cumbersome than I thought. To be honest, I am just learning about iPod and MP3 player capabilities. We’ve had an iPod in the house for awhile (one that Randy found) but I’ve never used it. I don’t have the time or inclination to use it. I suppose it would be fun to use the docking station and listen to music that way, but I’ve never bothered to learn how. Well, now this is forcing me to do it. The other thing I am learning about is the uses for a podcast. In my mind, I was creating this podcast to be listened to by my students only. I didn’t realize that it could be broadcast all over the net and people could pick it up on their RSS feeders. Yikes. That’s not really what I had in mind. Who would want to listen to it anyway? It’s a specific topic about how to use Discussion Boards on a Sharepoint site. Hmmmm. Not that interesting. Well it’s too late to rethink my Learning Object. I do want to know how to create a podcast, but there are so many unknowns at this point. Do I have to go and purchase a microphone or will the one on my computer work fine? What will I sound like, especially since I have a cold? Will I have to add pictures or video to it? How many tries will it take to get it right? My first step now is to have Randy show me how to use the iPod and get a little microphone to record with. After that, I will read some more information and go onto web tutorials to help me process the steps involved.

May 29, 2010 Today I did some more research on creating a Podcast. I went to Wikipedia and Edutopia. They helped a little but the blogs in Edutopia got a little convoluted. Then I went onto YouTube and watched some videos on how to create podcasts. I know I have seen the tutorial called “Podcasts in Plain English” before, but it helped to refresh my memory about the process of creating podcasts. The first time I watched it, it was all gobbledy gook. Now something is actually resonating with me. I watched several others and they were also beneficial. I have yet to try it out myself though. What I have done is downloaded Audacity and LAME. I’m not really sure how to get Audacity to read LAME yet, but that’s the next hurdle I have to jump through. I think I’ll get Randy to help me with that. He’s good with those things. On a side note, I was very proud of myself today. I recently lost my entire cache of Bookmarks off the Internet Explorer Toolbar and I was quite devastated by this. I had saved super websites throughout LTT and I was choked that they just disappeared. So, I used my social networking capabilities and checked to see if this had happened to anyone else. Sure enough it had. Now, the explanations of how to get them back were a little over my head, but I persevered. I remembered that these bookmarks were saved through a Google search engine because every once in awhile I would have to sign in with my Gmail password. So, I went onto Google History and found a bookmarks tab. They were all there!! I’m so happy. Now, I just need to get them back onto the toolbar again for easy access. My next step is to write the script for what I am going to say on my podcast. I’ll also have to gargle quite a bit before I do a test run. My voice is really scratchy and nasally these days. I am also going to continue looking at web tutorials to get a better sense of how to put the whole thing together. I think it would have been easier just to have Tom show me, but alas I was too sick on Wednesday to Kway. June 5, 2010 Today I did some more sleuthing the net for information on how to get Audacity to read LAME. I’ve downloaded both programs, but for some reason Audacity can’t find LAME on my desktop. I think it has to do with where I stored it, but it should really be able to find it if it’s on my C:/ drive and there is a shortcut on my desktop. I don’t really know what’s up. Now I’ve tried a recording and it’s pretty hollow sounding. I don’t know if Audacity is the best thing to be using after all. It takes up a huge amount of memory on my computer and I have a feeling that downloading it may have caused a few bugs to appear on my computer. August 13, 2010 Well, as you can see, I took a break from podcasting for awhile. It was a much needed break and now my voice and body are in better shape. A few days ago, I decided to go a different route with the podcasting and went to Podomatic to try it out. I figured if it didn’t work through this free site, I would give Audacity another try. Needless to say, I deleted Audacity at the beginning of June to see if the bugs on my computer would go away. About two weeks ago, Norton did a thorough search of my computer and “fixed” a few things that had error messages. I wonder if one of them was my bookmarks because miraculously they showed up again one day. Huh!  Anyway, I went through the step by step process for creating a podcast and gave it a try. It was actually about ten tries when all was said and  done, but I did post something. Unfortunately, when I click on the link now, the audio is not coming through. I don’t know if this is something on  my computer or the way I recorded it. I can see the voice waves so I know something recorded...I’ll just keep trying and get back to you.

**August 18, 2010** **__ Brainstorming about Field Studies for the fall 2010 __** Look at the pedagogical focus first and build the field study around it   · Crap Detection: assisting the students with finding legitimate websites for research -goals for the students will be around digital responsibility (note to self: Alan November’s book has chapters on crap detection) · Using wikis for discussion boards. The focus for the discussions will be....   -pros and cons: half of the class will have already done discussions boards · Participate in local and global learning communities to explore creative applications of technology to improve student learning (ISTE goal) Sub goal -improve connections between students and assisting students in finding legitimate sites (crap detection) -have students blog about some of the themes in the novel __Schooled__ by Gordon Korman -have them read various web pages that other educators have created about the book and decide whether they are appropriate, legitimate or not. -have a topic per week that the students blog on (give them guidelines and requirements before and during project) Things to think about: What blog site will I use? Will the technology teacher already be implementing blogging into his curriculum?

August 20, 2010 ** __ Discussion on Assessment  __ ** We just had a very in depth and worthwhile discussion on assessment. There were many different thoughts and opinions that were shared about this necessary but controversial aspect of teaching. For the sake of time, I will touch on three important ideas that were expressed. The first one was that assessment needs to be authentic. It needs to arise out of what has been taught in the class, what students have understood from the material and what the students are exploring on their own/with others. A standardized test that does not take the individual student nor the specific classroom into account has no place in education. The second point is that assessment needs to be ongoing. Assessment must extend throughout the terms and throughout the year. Teachers must take a variety of pieces of work, presentations and tests into account when assessing. This is the portfolio form of assessment. In essence we have to think of evaluation as coming right at the end of the year. Evaluation is summative and takes into account what the child has accomplished, the experiences they have had and what knowledge they have at the end of the year. Lastly, it is important to have a framework for assessment so we are grounded in how we evaluate students. Douglas Reeves has put together quite a nice one that is succinct, tiered and encompasses a variety of learning styles. The framework is as follows (based on what I understand of it) Learn – facts, information presented Understand – what do you know based on test evidence or other assessment (applied learning) Share – tell others about what you know Explore – what did you learn other than what you were taught; apply critical thinking skills Create – now go and do great things with this knowledge If we try to do assessment based on a variety of these steps we are well on the way to doing authentic assessment.

August 24, 2010

How to assess my outcomes for the Field Study
My thinking about the social/emotional development of my students At the beginning of the study, I will pair the students up and place their desks beside each other. Therefore, these pairings will be forced and contrived; they won’t actually be relationships of their own choosing. As the term goes on, the pairs will naturally have to share ideas (think pair share), property (using each other’s supplies), and be in physical proximity with each other. Furthermore, they will have to collaborate on a project which requires them to find out personal information about one another, share stories, be technological trouble-shooters and create a pictorial portfolio of this process. In order to assess whether or not relationships have improved I will have to watch the interactions of a few students and see whether or not they change from being contrived to being natural. Journal about this -by the end of the term, my hope is that the grade six and seven students be mingling both within and outside of class, choosing cross grade partners for activities, socializing together at lunch, and extending their relationships outside of class to emailing, Facebooking etc.