Bubbleshare Slideshow of Saipan Flat Stanley

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Using Bubbleshare was incredibly easy! They are the same photos that I have used for my other projects but I hope that you enjoy the variety of presentation. The only recommendation that I would have is to have a SAVE option half way through uploading photos or when a session is cut short. This may be important only to me because I live on Saipan where it took 4 times to upload the photos because of unscheduled power outages.

My determination to get the photos loaded onto BubbleShare surprised even me! After the third time of waiting a couple of hours for pictures to load I was ready to turn to another slideshow presenter that I already had pictures on. However, when I saw BubbleShare on one elementary class weblog I really wanted one of my own! So maybe not determination but selfishness!

Most of the pictures are from Saipan Flat Stanley while in Hot Springs, Arkansas. I hope that the pictures will inspire you to begin a Flat Stanley project of your own. The students really enjoyed it. I have not had a chance to take the pictures and letters back in to the classroom yet because I have been plagued by a variety of illnesses. Yes, Mr.Murphy, bad luck, wrong zodiac sign, have been following me around the past couple of weeks. I hope to be able to make it back before the end of the school year. Make sure to look back to see how I presented the material to both 4 th grade classes.

Here is my online resume. I used Weebly to create this one. You can go directly to the site at Erin's resume to get a better look. I'll be honest and say that I did not take any real creative risks when it came to writing this resume. It looks pretty much like my paper resume just a little shorter. I like Weebly a lot and look forward to getting to know the ins and outs a little better. I think that it may be a good place to set up a classroom newsletter but I need to give it a try.

I think that for my next resume or online portfolio I will try Zunal's zportfolio. It is very friendly too but allows for more in depth material to be added. I think I could build it through Weebly but it may take a little longer. This is a good experience because it is completely relevant to what we need to be doing right now. I know that I need to start building my e-portfolio- getting units put together online and such- so that I am ready when I graduate next Christmas. This assignment lit a fire under my feet to get me going!

Well, for what it is worth here is my short video of Saipan Flat Stanley. You can watch the video here- Saipan Flat Stanley . I used Jumpcut to create the video. It is incredibly easy to upload and edit images there. You can even edit in Movie Maker first and then upload if you feel more comforatable. I added some audio but I think that it did not attach to my video. I will have to fix that later. I could not get the video to load here on Blogger but it is probably an easy fix once I spend some more time looking into it!

I enjoyed participating in the Flat Stanley project. The students that I worked with enjoyed it too. There were only 4 students out of 37 who had actually been to the United States. They were thrilled to get to know my mom and say that they know somebody in Arkansas. I like that it is easy to integrate into all disciplines and can be modified to fit any need a teacher may have.

I really wanted the students to get their Saipan Flat Stanleys back by the end of the year so I sent them to my mother in Arkansas. It worked out perfectly because for my practicum I was teaching the students about the South Central States and our Flat Stanley project made the learning a little more relevant.

Over the summer I hope to find some penpals to set up Flat Stanley project in my student teaching. Having the Flat Stanleys adds a creative element that the students are able to write about. I am amazed at all of the Flat Stanley resources on the internet. A teacher could probably base a year long theme on Flat Stanley!

Hope you enjoy the video. At the end there are a few photos of me with some students during our culminating event- party! It was difficult for me to leave these students. For the party one class wrote a play about my teaching and the other class performed a song. It was a wonderful experience. I had a fantastic mentor teacher and learned strategies that I will take with me to my future classroom.

Mobile Learning Teachback

You cannot click on the video links in the presentation below, please use one of the following links

SlideShare ppt presentation

or view on
Zoho

and then return to our classroom discussion board for some friendly feedback!

The past few weeks our ed tech class has been creating powerpoint presentations that teach a technology topic. The teachback that I created is about the future of mobile learning (also at Zoho). I honestly cannot say how much I learned about this topic because my knowledge before hand was extremely limited.My research just kept leading me to more and more about mobile technologies and their educational uses. You will probably find my presentation fairly elementary but I really had no idea that these are the possibilities that are out there right now and that they are realistic expectations.

In addition to learning about mobile learning I learned how to use a couple new websites for viewing powerpoint presentations. During my research I stumbled upon Zoho and found it extremely useful in preparing my powerpoint. During the day I get small bits of time that I can work on my research and even though I save all the sites to my del.icio.us account, once I finally made it home at night I would have to remember what I wanted to change or add to my powerpoint and then go to it again. Zoho is an online presentation creator (and much more!).I was able to work on and save my presentation anywhere and anytime. Just an FYI, you can invite people into a forum to chat while you present. Great resource!

The only problem that I had was when I uploaded most of the Powerpoint from my files to the website it changed the formatting a little- just enough to drive me crazy. So I had a choice to either redo the slides or go to SlideShare and upload for viewing. As you can see, I tried the easier of the two. I am glad that we had this project because I got experience the ease of both presentation sharing sites.

When you view my presentation you may wonder why I did not embed the video. Yes, it is easy to just follow the YouTube how to videos. My problem was that the video that I chose had a different URL code than most and I could not figure out how to tweak it and embed it.

As usual I should have been more organized when preparing. I need to figure out how to effectively use the internet resources available to me. I need to also find a way to show the variety of uses in a better way.

Overall I am extremely glad that I chose this topic to present because it has motivated me to try it out in the classroom. Lots of the mlearning sites offer help preparing grants and getting started implementing a mobile curriculum. From the research I found the mobile technologies improved on level learning only slightly. What was impressive is that it improved below level and at risk students significantly. With the diversity of our classrooms at an all time high mobile learning can help us individualize instruction and motivate the students to take control of their learning.

Mobile Learning Teachback

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Animoto

This is not an ed tech assignment but I wanted to experiment with Animoto a little and share my results with everybody. I really love this video slideshow maker. My favorite part about this site is that it had a selection of music for me to pick from. I am one of the very few people who does not have an iPod and I get confused with audio file formats. Animoto takes the music that you pick and then adjusts the type of video to make according to your music style. I think that is genius!

These are just a few pictures from my ed 471 practicum. We went on a field trip to the CNMI History Musuem, Chamolinian Village, and American Memorial Park. There are also a couple of pictures from my first days and Valentines Day as well as the classes making Saipan Flat Stanley.

The video quality is entirely my fault. I chose the Entertainer for one because it is a favorite piano piece of mine. Secondly, I should have eliminated a few pictures so that they could be on the screen longer. Another thing I could have done was to choose the longer video version. All just things to consider next time I make a video.

For the ed tech assignment I plan to use Jumpcut. Please look back in a couple of weeks for the final video. It will have pictures of my last days at GTC 4th grade as well as Saipan Flat Stanley returns home. Now go and make your own video!

Rubric Assessment Tool

I love rubrics! In fact I was using rubrics before I even started thinking about becoming a teacher. They have been used by private companies to assess employee effectiveness and performance as well as the company's own performance. I have found that I like rubrics and checklists so much that I incorporate them into weekly activities when I have a practicum.

One of the weaknesses that I see in myself as a future teacher is my inability to be a consistant grader. Rubrics and checklists take away the game of playing favorites or being judgemental. Rubrics spell out exactly what is expected and from there the students take responsibility for their grade. It is also a guide for students while they are working. Students don't have to rely on the teacher, they follow the rubric. Thus, freeing up time for the teacher to spend with students that may really need the extra input.

For this rubric I used Rubistar , which I have used several times before. I like the ease of this rubric creator. My favorite part of this site is the ability to just go into the rubric and add or remove text into the rubric boxes. Their wording serves as a guide but can be adjusted for the specific project or task that you want to assess.

Searching through all of the created rubrics is tedious for me. I would like to see some sort of rating system in place or remove rubrics that have not been looked at or interacted with after a certain amount of time. Something else that could be added is more formatting for the display of the rubric. I know that this is knit picky!! It would just be nice if when I print it out or download it I did not have to add a border to it on my own. They could have a set of borders. No a border is not necessary but students are motivated by some of the strangest things! Overall I really love this site though! If I don't create my own I use this site.

Saipan Flat Stanley Crossword

Creating an Excel crossword puzzle is easier than you think! With the help of an Excel tutorial www.microsoft.com/education/Crossword.mspx I created a crossword puzzle for my social studies class. We are working on the Flat Stanley project www.flatstanleyproject.net/ to send letters to some of my family members in Arkansas. We chose Arkansas because we are currently studying the Southern states and this will hopefully make the United States more meaningful for the students in the classroom.

A great suggestion made by our educational technology teacher, was to have students create the crossword puzzle and then take it home for their parents to complete. What a great idea for so many reasons. This creates motivation for the students to create and learn at the same time. They won't even realize that they are learning their vocabulary for the Quiz on Friday! Another reason that I like this is that the parents are kept up to date on what content is being covered during the year. This is a creative way to help parents know what to ask their children about or to provide more information for them. By putting the student in charge of creating the crossword puzzle it also tells the parent what the child is interested in. Just as teachers are having to find creative ways to present information to students we also need to find creative ways to keep parents informed about all aspects of their child's education.

Students these days are great at multitasking. They can learn new information and programs at the same time. By letting students explore Excel with a purpose the information will become concrete. This should not be a one time only creation though. Students should have the opportunity to use Excel throughout the year to build their skills and ideas on how to use the program and what the different uses could be.

If I did this again I would try to make my crossword look a little nicer but that has nothing to do with learning to use Excel to make a crossword. If I were to use this in the classroom I would suggest to the students to put in a few personal clues for the parents to fill in. This is such a great activity for parents to keep in touch with their kids. I know that lots of parents on Saipan could not fill in a crossword. With this in mind I would tell students that they should sit down with the parent to fill it in.

The past couple of weeks our class has been working on making Web Quests. My partner for this activity was Christina and she was the key in figuring out what our topic would be. Christina has a love of the Arts and is determined to inform teachers and students about artists and art history and how to fit it into their curriculum.
The main purpose for our Web Quest, Become an Artist at http://zunal.com/webquest.php?user=7191, was to peak student interest about what types of art they like to look at and create. Having the internet as a tool to quickly show students different mediums is a big time and money advantage over having to create the art in the classroom. Using the internet, students are exposed to more art styles and are able to experiment a little more than if actually painting or drawing in the classroom. It is still a concrete learning experience that the students will remember more than just reading about it.

My experience with zunal.com was wonderful. I really cannot believe how easy it was to create a Web Quest. It was so much fun! As a future teacher it is important for me to remember that I need to keep up with educational tools and not become complacent with the routine. Sometimes it is easy to make excuses and say that there is not enough money in the budget, or not enough time to add it to the curriculum. Now that I have explored the internet a little bit more I know that those excuses are not valid. There is lots of free information and tools that can easily be added to enhance almost any lesson.

One more note that I want to add is that Webquests can be a good method to reach the individual needs of our students. Webquests can be created to reach all levels of learners where they are at in their learning of the content. This was a big aha for me.

One thing that I would like to have added to zunal.com is a notice about the amount of time before it “times out” and does not save work. Yes, you guessed it. We took too long creating our task page and had to go back and add everything back in. Next time I will have everything written out in advance and have all of the web pages bookmarked so that I don’t take as much time creating the task page. Our solution was just to save every few minutes. This was such a great experience that I look forward to creating my next Web Quest!

Wow, what an easy gradebook to use! This was much easier than my last experience. Talk about user friendly. I like that there is no guesswork as to how to get started and fixing something is very simple. I see no reason for a teacher to reject the idea if an administrator wanted all teachers to use a computer based grade keeper. Computer gradebooks take the guesswork out of how to weight an assignment. I know some teachers that only have two types of grades (tests/homework) because they never figured out how to keep grades.

One teacher told me that there is another computer grade keeper (not free!) that has comments that are prewritten and can be added. Teachers from that school use the gradebook for their mid-progress reports. That could be a useful addition to this software.

Students and parents should like this gradebook. Being able to see one student at a time would be good for student and parent conferences. Sometimes it can be confusing to look at a hand-written gradebook. Privacy issues are also solved with the individual viewing option.

It is also great that parents and students can check their grades at any time. Students of all levels should know where they stand. By using Engrade it would save the teacher time from having to discuss with students what they are missing or what they earned. Even here on Saipan parents are becoming connected and have e-mail. It would be great to send automatic reminders for parents to check their child's grades often.

Once I get into the classroom and have some experience I will probably think of more applications that this type of software could help out with. For now though, I see no downside of Engrade!

As an adult I have learned to form an outline or prioritized list in my mind to reach my goal. However, when I rely completely on my mind things are forgotten or a task that I should have started at the beginning ends up being put towards the end. Using the mind mapping software to help me formulate ideas for what I need to accomplish for the Flat Stanley project has really helped me see different directions that I could go with for the project and also helped me see the various tasks that I need to start on right away.

The reason that I like mind mapping more than creating an outline is that 1) not everybody is a logical, sequential learner and 2) it is easy to add information to when brainstorming as a class. Sometimes I feel that when doing a formal outline students get hung up on the finality of it. For me at least, seeing a map makes it easier to change or add to the plan of attack.

If you have a hard time seeing my mind map you can go to http://www.screencast.com/t/UVGhriatP to get a better view. This was the one problem that I had- getting a good picture up on my blog. Maybe I can learn from some other people when we are finished this week. I used FreeMind , http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page to make the graphic organizer. I just downloaded the trial. It is not as pretty as some of the other mind mapping products but I found it to be very user friendly. Something that is important to me. I did try out Head Case, too, and liked the way it looks, especially for high school or adult students use.

Everything I did in this activity was new to me. I think that once I saw the completed project that I created I understood how important and effective a tool like this could be in the classroom.

As I mentioned, the only thing that I did not enjoy was trying to get a good picture up onto my blog. I used the jing project http://jingproject.com/ , to take a screen shot of my mind map but when I went to put it on my blog it was too big. I tried several other routes but none of them seemed to work. I think that if I knew a little more about html and programming it would have been easy but I kept getting an error. I will keep trying!

I really would not do anything differently next time. Actually I am going to try it out again for another project to fine tune my new skills! If I only do it once I will probably forget in a few weeks. Please feel free to post helpful hints for me in the future. I enjoy POSITIVE feedback.

My first blog!

Finally my first blog. I am just trying things out and hoping that they work. The picture that I have included is from a family trip to Bali. My boys were young then, almost 2 years ago actually! We went to the Bali zoo. My family gives me inspiration and determination. Going back to college after 15 years is a difficult task. NMC has brought lots of wonderful people to my path though and I am thankful for all of the beautiful friendships and people that I have met through this experience.

I am excited to learn from NMC's educational technology class as I am one of the few that does not have a cell phone, myspace account, and never im'd until last week! This will be an exciting and hopefully not too bumpy ride.

Although this second picture is not the most flattering it is more representative of my life here on Saipan! We try to take in the beach or waterpark as much as we can. Saipan is full of magnificent scenery and I really hope that my boys are able to remember a fragment of it when we have to move back to the mainland.