Amy B

Janean E

Eliza F

Krista G

Danielle H

Marti K

Sue K

Dave L

Scott M

Martin O

Dana O

Mike P

Jim S

Lorrie S

John S

Mary S

Loretta S

Amber S

Syllabus

syllabusspring08.doc

3/24/08 NOTE:  I have decided to forego the Open Office assignment.  Therefore, you have the remaining time before our meeting on April 3 to finish up things that need to be finished and prepare for your presentation that you will give at our last meeting.  I will again be sending out email messages this week to let everybody know what their status is on our other assignments sometime this week.  Please make sure that you have completed the necessary assignments.  Your presentation on April 3rd should be about 5 minutes in length.  The purpose of the presentation is to show the class one of the assignments that you have finished this semester that you have found interesting, learned something new about, will really use in your classroom, or any/all of the above.  Also, please be on time to our class as John Swayze will be there to do evaluations.

Blog Assignment (due Tuesday, 3/25/08 at 11 pm)

For this assignment, please visit the links below for examples and such and then follow the directions here:

1.  Create a blog account on http://www.21classes.com

2.  Experiment with the different features that they have available for setting up the look of your blog and the content of your blog.

3.  On your wiki, create a link to your blog account that you have created and write a paragraph detailing some positives and negatives about using blogs in education and indicate whether you would be likely to use a blog in your classroom or not and why.

http://www.21classes.com/

http://educational.blogs.com/

http://oedb.org/library/features/top-100-education-blogs

http://tavani.21classes.com

Chatroom Assignment (due Tuesday, 3/18/08 at 11pm)

3/17/08:  NOTE:  If you do not have access to a computer with an Internet connection outside of school and are unable to access the gabbly website, simply skip part 1 of the directions below and make a note of it in your assignment for part 2.  The purpose of Part 1 was simply to make sure you were able to do the steps if you wanted to use this type of communication tool in your classroom.

chatroom.doc

For this assignment, you must complete 2 things.

Part 1:

Embed a chatroom (it's free from http://www.gabbly.com) in a webpage to which you have access OR to your wiki page.  Go to the gabbly website if you want to embed a chatroom into some other web page.  If you are embedding a chat room onto your wiki page, make sure the cursor is where you want the chat room to go, click the Insert Plugin button, mouse over Chat and click on chat room.  Follow the simple directions and you are done!

Part 2:

Please choose from one of the following options.

Option 1

Develop a lesson plan detailing how you could use a chat room for one of your classes with you serving as a moderator.  Explain the purpose of the chat room (reviewing for a test, covering new material, covering extra material), explain how much time students would be expected to participate in the chat room, explain whether it is a requirement or extra credit, and anything else you think would be important, such as measures you might take to ensure all of your students participate in a manner you find appropriate.  Explain both the positives and negatives as you see them for such an assignment.

Option 2

Develop a lesson plan how you could use a chat room for one of your classes with a student serving as a moderator.  Explain items as listed in Option 1, but include what you would expect students to do to prepare for being moderator of the chat room. Explain both the positives and negatives as you see them for such an assignment.

Option 3

Develop a scenario in which you could use a chat room involving other professionals.  Explain the purpose of the chat room (such as a meeting between grade level teachers in different buildings or different districts) and how the idea could be beneficial.  Also include potential drawbacks.

Chatroom

Group Presentations (to be done on 3/6/08 class meeting)

Please make sure that your group is ready for their presentations this week.  Please see the directions listed below for more information.  Let me know if you have any questions/concerns with the presentation.

Inspiration Assignment (due 2/28/08 at 11pm)

PLEASE NOTE:  For those of you who did an assignment with Inspiration/Kidspiration/InspireData, I will be getting back to you with my comments.  However, due to much illness in the Tavani household and the fact that Inspiration caught on to me with downloading free trials onto my home computer, I'm trying to get trials set up on computers at school.  Thank you for your patience! 

I don't think that there will be an easy for people at Wyalusing to download and install the trial version of Inspiration very easily.  Therefore, this will become an optional assignment.  If you choose to do it, you will be able to skip one assignment later in the semester.  I'm not sure what the downloading policies are at districts other than Wyalusing, so feel free to try it if you are at another district.  If you are downloading the software at home, please know that it could take quite some time if you have a dialup connection.

Your assignment is to create an assignment in which the students will use Inspiration to organize information you have discussed in class.  You can use Inspiration, Kidspiration, or InspireData, depending on what assignment you would like to use.  Post one paragraph describing the usual stuff like time commitment, inside/outside class, and what type of information that the students would be covering.

http://www.inspiration.com

WebQuest Assignment (due 2/21/08 at 11pm)

Your assignment is to create a webquest that can be used in your subject area by your students.  Unlike some of your other assignments, there will be no lesson plan paragraph that you need to post.  You will only need to post a link to your webquest.  Please follow the guidelines for a webquest discussed in class and that can be found at http://www.webquest.org concerning basic groundrules for proper webquests.  Please use the template that can be found using the link below.  Please note that this is an MS Word document.  For our assignment, it will be easiest to use a word processing version of this template.  If you would like directions on how to turn it back into a web page, please let me know and I'll be happy to provide them for you.

WebQuestexample.doc 

Please make sure that you follow these directions to access the document above:

1. Click on the link.
2. Click Save.
3. Save the file in the folder of your choosing and rename it using a name you would like to use.
4. Click Open.
5. Replace all generalized template text with your assignment.
6. Save your work.
7. Attach it to your wiki page using the Attach file icon.

Group Presentation Information

Virtual Technology/Tours Assignment (due 2/14/08 at 11pm)

Your assignment for this week is to develop a lesson involving students using virtual technology or a virtual tour.  Please note:  for this assignment, your students/you will not create a virtual tour.  You will use something that has been created by somebody else that you find on the Internet.  The lesson should be the same as before.  I am looking for a paragraph explaining how the lesson would go, including how much class time will be used, how much out of class time might be used, how it connects to your curriculum, and stuff like that.  Also, please create a link to your virtual tour of choice that is being used in the lesson so we can all see it.

You can use a search engine to find a good site.  Here are a few that I found:

http://www.virtualfreesites.com/tours.html

http://www.caa.uidaho.edu/vtd/htm/overview.asp

http://virlab.virginia.edu/VL/home.htm

http://www.msichicago.org/exhibit/U505/index.html

http://virtualmathmuseum.org/gallery4.html

Class Meeting on 2/7/08

Because we are meeting on the 7th, no assignment is due.  We will be discussing the next phase of the class and will have time to break into groups for the group assignment.  Please be prepared to choose groups and know that this is the only class time that you will be given to work on this assignment.  Presentations will be at the next meeting on 3/6/08.

MS PowerPoint Assignment (due 1/31/08 at 11pm)

1/30/08:  A few people have been having problems with the links and having PowerPoint freeze on them when they try to insert links.  Here's one thing I think could be causing the problem:  If you copy a slide in its entirety (such as an "Incorrect, please go back" slide), PowerPoint gets confused.  If you delete these slides and start those slides over, but make a different one for each incorrect, you will be OK.  If that seems like too much work, there is another option.  On the Slide Show menu, there is an option for what are called Action Buttons.  You can format these buttons to go back to the "Last Slide Viewed" and reuse an "Incorrect Answer" slide.  There is another option that is a bit more involved if you are interested.  Please let me know if you have more questions.

Develop a lesson plan/concept utilizing MS PowerPoint for your students.  Please note that I am looking for you to include a particular component of PowerPoint in this assignment...

PowerPoint has become a widely used presentation tool.  I, for one, use it to present new information in both my statistics and geometry classes.  However, our focus here is to turn the tables- to have the students use the software as a way of demonstrating their knowledge of your material or as a way of learning your material.  I want you to take your knowledge of PowerPoint to the next level.  Two features that can be used in tandem to this end are Kiosk Mode and Hyperlinks.  By using these tools, you can "lock down" a presentation so that the person(s) viewing it must follow a predetermined path to reach the end.  Open the example to see what I am talking about:

kiosklinksexample.ppt

When you run the presentation above, you must follow the links to complete the presentation.  A wrong answer will lead you back to the question and give the user a chance to correct themselves.  Your assignment can follow one of two paths:

1. You can create a lesson in which you create a presentation that will be used by your students to learn new information and then take a quiz (in the presentation) on the material, utilizing the kiosk and hyperlinks features.
2. You can create a lesson in which the students would be responsible for creating a presentation (using kiosk and hyperlinks) to demonstrate to you their knowledge of the material.  This is what is called creating an expert system.

Your lesson plan/concept should contain the same material as the Excel file.  The example you provide to me should contain the following elements:

• Formatted slides
• Hyperlinks
• Kiosk mode
• Appropriate clip art/images
• Any other features you would like to include

Like last week, you need only provide me with the starting point.  If your vision is to have a presentation that ultimately contains 50 slides, that's great, but you don't need to create all 50 for me.  I'm thinking somewhere in the neighborhood of 10-15 slides should do for this assignment.  That's 10-15 total slides- including title slide, a bit of information, a couple of multiple choice questions, and what happens when the users get the questions correct or incorrect.

Please note a couple of things.  First, please refer to the directions supplied below.  There are detailed instructions on using Kiosk mode and inserting links.  Second, some features aren't necessary in this type of presentation.  For example, animating the text to fly in from all directions doesn't really help here- especially with the multiple choice questions.  Third- and this one really is my opinion more than anything else- I'm a big believer in using a consistent format throughout the presentation.  Changing from one template to another or from one color scheme to another is a distraction. 

If you have any questions/problems, you know where to find me/how to get in touch with me.  Happy PowerPointing!

directionspowerpoint.doc

MS Excel Assignment (due 1/24/08 at 11pm)

Develop a lesson plan/concept utilizing MS Excel for your students.  Included in your posting of the assignment shoud be an example of what you expect from your students.  The fundamental idea behind our assignments is NOT for you to use the software but for your students to use the software to gain knowledge about the subject matter and/or to demonstrate that knowledge in an understandable format.

directionsexcel1.doc 

directionsexcel2.doc 

Examples

statecapitals.xls

booklist.xls