Red Devil Information

This is the last post to this site. I believe I’ve checked everything off that needs to be done.

I know that on technical proficiency I am not showing I know how to bring students into the blog, but I have decided not to do that. This blog is not for the students at school, unlike my other one, so I opted not to add any users. I know that will mean a lower grade according to the rubric, and I understand that. It just seemed superfluous to me, but that is my choice. Your rubric is clear, as were all the items you required from us. So thanks, Karl, and

My first “educational podcast is complete. Hope you enjoy it. It was made on a MacBook using Screen Flow. (If the video does not automatically appear, click on the link below.)

GeoDevil Website Introduction

It will take time to accurately judge the effectiveness of this project. As it grows and I adapt it to the ever-changing environment of our school, I will constantly be reflecting on what is working and what isn’t. This will, then, be an ongoing,fluid process. When evaluating the effectiveness of this site, I will be looking at several measures.

• The most obvious is whether or not the site has impacted the scores my students are receiving on the common assessments. While it is difficult to compare test scores over the years, I can look at a few of the standards and see if there has been an improvement in reaching them.
• Another measure is the amount of work turned in. A huge problem for my students is taking zeros on assignments. If this site can cut down on those zeros by even ten percent, it will make a huge difference on the number of students receiving a credit for this class.
• I will also be observing how often the students use the site to answer their questions rather than turning to me, their instructor, for assistance. One of the hallmarks of a 21st century learner is the ability to access information for themselves. My site will be a success if students use it to find out what their work is and how to do it better.
• Of course, I also plan on keeping count of how many visitors are accessing the site and when. As of now, I am putting this on hold, as Google will be migrating to Google Sites over the next few months, and are no longer providing support for Pages. Once the transition is made, I will be endeavoring to find a way to add a counter, since usage is a key component of success in this instance.

I’m not sure who the powers-that-be at my school are. I rarely ask for permission to do anything and am scarcely called on the carpet for it. That’s not to imply that I’m doing all sorts of radical experiments in my classroom, but I do not see the need to request permission to bring Web 2.0 into the classroom. The district has filters on what we can access; anything we can get to for my class that the censors allow to me is fair game. One of the things students need to learn is how to filter and decide what is appropriate on their own. I actually preferred it when we had no filters. Yes, a few students make some mistakes, but most learned from their errors quickly and those that did not I used to show the rest of the students the unpleasant consequences of repeatedly making bad choices.

Introducing the site was simple enough. Early in the second week, I took all my students to the site using the 20 class computers in my room. I showed them how to get to it, what pages were included, how to move between pages and sites, and explained why they should use it. Most of my students are only accessing it during class time at this point, but hopefully this will change. Especially now that I showed a PowerPoint presentation that included my website to all the parents who came to Open House last week. Hopefully they will encourage their children to be regular visitors.

Here is the URL to my Podcast:

http://www.edublogs.tv/play_audio.php?audio=16

Now I just need to make a music video, or at least some cover art, for this piece.

The continuing development of my class website will require a wide variety of tools. A partial list  includes:

1. a blog
2. a wiki
3. digital camera
4. digital camcorder
5. screen recording software (Screen Flow, hopefully)
6. sound software (GarageBand, Sound Studio)
7. image editing software (Adobe Photoshop Elements)
8. Movie editing software (iMovie)
9. storage for online video and audio (edublogs.tv?)

At this point, the website is coming together fine. It is nice to be able to create a site that is attractive and useful without having to spend hours working through a learning curve or banging my head into code. The above tools should allow me to do whatever I need within Google Pages. Google allows for a great deal of flexibility in working with the pages, and appears to do everything I need as a teacher. With the tools I have and am gathering in the future, I should be able to make the website as powerful as I could wish.

There will be multiple purposes for the website I am creating.

1. Show students the work we are doing for the week.
2. Allow students to check the work if they are absent or have added the class late (a too-frequent occurrence at our school).
3. Link to other general geography sites that we sometimes use during the class
4. Link to other web sites that of my own

• Quia (for additional review and quizzes)
• Red Devil Blog
• Red Devil Wiki

This will be an ongoing process rather than a one-time thing. The web page will definitely be maintained and will grow over the years as it continues to be refined.

I see this project as a fluid, organic piece of work. As such, the ADDIE process will be flowing together as one river rather than as separate branches. This is not always the best practice, but it is often how things work in a real classroom.

The users that this project is designed for are the ninth grade students of my geography classes at Sweetwater High in National City. All five are regular levels classes (as opposed to the two honors classes we offer). Their skill set in English and computers tend to be low, so the project is keep simple for that reason. I would like the users of the site to be able to access information about the class in a flexible way and to participate in class in ways I was not previously able to accomplish. Ideally, they will use the site not only to check on the work we are doing in class, but also to interact with my blog and to add information to our class wiki. This is all still in its formative stages, so I am uncertain exactly what they will get out of it, but at the very least, it will be an easily accessible place for both students and parents to find out more about the class. 

Having  a web page for class is already a well-traveled path, so there are many examples to draw from. I have created class pages before using a variety of methods, from Pagemill, to School Notes, to Dreamweaver. Some have been more successful than others, but all have served some purpose. I think Google Pages will be better than some of the earlier iterations, due to its simplicity, flexibility,  and the ability to edit pages from any computer.

The main difficulties I foresee in this web site not being successful as a learning tool are three-fold:

•  First, many of my student do not have computers with access to the Internet at home. While they can still access the site from my classroom and from around the school, to take full advantage of the site, the students (and their parents) need to be able to access it from away from the school site.
• Secondly, as mentioned earlier, there are many of my students that are English Language Learners. This makes if difficult for some of them to read directions without help. On the other hand, having the information available online also allows them to go over again at their own speed and on their own time, rather than just relying on what happened in class. Overall, I think the site will be a help to the ELL students.
• Thirdly, the motivation of the students themselves will be a limiting factor. Each student must answer some form of the question, “Do I care about/am interested in/hope to pass my geography class. Hopefully, the answer is yes. If not, it does not matter how good the web site is. The website itself will help motivate some students, but many are going to need much more. Technology alone will not provide it.

I have been experimenting with using different forms of Web 2.0 with my classroom this year. First of all, I’ve created a “fully functional website” using Google Pages for my classes. It is delightful to update and work on my site anyplace I choose, rather than always coming home and slogging through DreamWeaver. Though my site is not as attractive as the one I built with the more capable DreamWeaver, Google Pages offers everything I really need and allows me to keep current much more easily. I keep the class guidelines here, the current work for the week, and the makeup work for the inumberable students we have coming in late this year. I also have some photos of the classes for the students to enjoy.

I also tried to use WizIQ (similar to Adobe Connect in many ways) to post information and have students interact simultaneously with that information, but that experiment didn’t work very well. The students enjoyed the madcap atmosphere, but it did not help me deliver the curriculum and I have discontinued it.

I have set up a blog for my students to access concerning what’s going on at school or in my head. There are polls posted there they can take, and class or school related thoughts they can comment on. They are also told they can give me feedback on what is going on in class. Few students are interested in checking the blog, and fewer still comment on what is include, but I will try to grow this over time.

Another new thing I am trying is setting up a wiki for the classes to create an online glossary. Each student is given one word to define for the class and give examples. They also need to include an image of the term. This has been interesting and frustrating. As we can not all work on it at once, I have the kids do it on their own time, either at home or during the school day. Many times I have had work deleted as the students add more. I can always go back to earlier versions, but this is presenting the glossary from growing. Still, it’s good experience, and the students are at least learning what a wiki is.

I need to start working on getting some multimedia onto the Net so my students can access some of my presentations online. I’m still working through how to do this, but time is at a premium. We are introducing a new information management system on campus, and the place is chaotic. We are simultaneously adapting to a new assessment system as well, so all common assessments must be redone. Time is at a premium. Still, I plan on getting to work on it soon . . .hopefully.

My name is Ken Callaway, and this post is to introduce myself to my ED TECH 700 professor, Karl Richter. I have been a teacher for over twenty years, with the last 15+ years of service at Sweetwater High School in National City. I am in the Social Science department, and have taught a wide variety of course under that umbrella, but the constant in all those years has been ninth graders. Each year I ask for that grade level because I enjoy seeing how they are when they enter high school, then watching them change over the four years they spend on our campus. Since the vast majority of teachers prefer teaching upperclassmen, (ninth graders do present more of a discipline problem), I have no problem getting my wish list granted. The last few years, my main assignment has been ninth grade World Geography. This coming school year, which starts this Monday for Martin Jimenez, Roberto Bonilla, and myself, my assignment will be five classes of Geography.

My personal life revolves around my family and my hobbies. I have a wife, Ivy, and a son, Dylan, who is 14. We live in Jamul, a rural community 30 minutes to the east of San Diego. Ivy has a horse, which requires a great deal of her time, energy, and money. Dylan is becoming a computer geek, heavily involved in World of Warcraft, and just getting in to building his own computer, (if he can raise the funds). The free time their interests give me are spent playing tennis, hiking in the mountains and deserts of this county, and reading, particularly histories.

I’m not sure of what the final project will entail, specifically, but there are several ways I’m planning on using the blog:

1. Post materials and resources

I will definitely make use of this aspect. One of the things I will be trying out this year is WizIQ. So each time I use it, I will need to post a URL that the students can copy/paste into their browser. I will also use it for links to my Quia and SchoolNotes pages. It will be a great place for the online copy of my rules, as well as maps and other geography resources.

2. Host online discussions

I will be experimenting with this as well. I had set up another blog for this, but this space will eventually take that over.

4. Replace your newsletter

I will not use it to replace, but rather to supplement, the newsletter. Most of our students don’t have access to a computer with the Internet at home. A hard copy is vital.

5. Get your students blogging

This is something that I will be introducing this year.

7. Integrate multimedia of all descriptions

I will be trying to tie in slideshows and presentations that the students can interact with on their own time. I’ve never been happy so far with how this has worked before due to bandwidth and hardware issues, but we’ll see.

9. Get feedback

I will be playing with this part of it, but the times I’ve tried in the past to get feedback through the Web has not been too successful.

10. Create a fully functional website

I have a DreamWeaver site for my class, but from the way your site looks, I would like to use the Edublog rather than DreamWeaver. That program is too complicated for what my needs are, and I can only work on it at home. I love the idea of being able to work on it anywhere, plus not worry about paying for anything!