Final Taskstream Submission

This is the table of critical assesements for my Ed Tech class which illustrates examples and links that I have studied and created during my time in the class.

Student Achievement Data

Here is the raw data that I used to calculate student achievement for this sample classroom:



We were asked to exclude the scores from the first five tests, as well as the students who above classroom average scores overall. Their scores can still be found on this raw data sheet, however they have been hidden in case I need to use that data another time.

Here is the chart that reflects the data above.



This chart includes data from the students whose test averages fell below the overall class average. As you can see, overall student scores climbed over the span of the testing. In fact, the only student who had erratically climbing scores was Katherine Hepburn, who had an incredibly low test score for test 6, an enormous jump on test 7, and a decrease of about 20 points on test 8.

It is clear that although these students shown in the graph were the lower scoring students in the class, they still show improvement over the course of the class. Their test scores climbed as the year went on. This shows that although they were lower scoring as compared to the overall class average, they were still retaining information enough to score a little higher on each test.

This assignment has been somewhat frustrating for me, but I think I finally figured it out. I have used Excel for work, however for some reason it's been a different experience for me to use Google Docs for this purpose. I think part of it was an issue with my computer. Overall, this has been an incredibly useful experience, and I know that I will use spreadsheets like this in my classroom. Definitely will be using them for calculating class averages like we did here.

Finally, here is the link to this presentation

Multimedia II

I took this video from a longer version that my sister and I created about 10 years ago. I wrote the script and we acted it out together. Clearly we had an abundance of time and plenty of lame props. I created the slideshow in Google Docs to follow along with the content in the edited video.





This is exactly the type of nerdy stuff that I am hoping to be able to implement in my classroom. Making history interesting and memorable is very important to me, and I want the kids to be able to use their creativity to understand and explain stuff that would otherwise be boring. I think that asking the students to create their own videos, and also having them watch other students' would be a great way to peak their interest.

In fact, my sister tells me that her involvement with this nerdy venture helped her remember facts about history for years. (Following WWI, we also did videos on the Russian Revolution and the Boston Tea Party.)

OK

I will be honest. I really am not 100% sure what this "multimedia" assignment entails even though I read and re-read the agenda, and watched other students' videos. But I have been wanting to do something like this for over a year now, and so I finally went for it.

I used Windows Live Movie Maker, which was very easy to download. I have never created a video on my computer before, and I didn't realize that my PC hadn't come with any kind of little freebie movie-maker. But regardless. Easy to download.

I have like four million videos of my son from pregnancy (didn't include any of the tummy-wiggling video clips - you're welcome)...but they are all so long, and I really liked the idea of setting them to music. It took me a little while to get the audio figured out. It wouldn't take to iTunes, so I ended up just finding my hard copy CD and saving it to my media folder as a Windows Media file. Then uploaded from there. When the video was complete, I uploaded to YouTube and embedded in this blog. It was really fun to cut the videos to match with the music. I think that this is definitely something that I would play around with more.

I also think that this program was easy enough that middle schoolers could use it. I would love to assign students a short (2 minute or so) historical re-enactment, using creativity and humor. I think that would be fun and easy to make, and great for the rest of the class to watch.

Web 2.0 Application

This is Meri and Meg's presentation on TokBox. We had a great time playing with this tool and a slightly frustrating time posting embedding it into our google presentation! But I think it still turned out pretty well.

TokBox does have an "upload to YouTube" button available, which would have made this project VERY easy. However, it didn't seem to work for some reason. I recorded several different vids and the uploads kept failing. When I did a little research, it sounds like TokBox isn't consistently the most reliable site, but hey it's free, and I definitely think it is SUPER useful for recording video messages, and would still have potential for application in my classroom.




By Meri and Meg!

Upload for Presentation...

Sometimes you have to jump through a few hoops to get things where you want them...

...and this is totally not what I wanted to put here, but it's kind of neat!

Skype

So, I just created a Skype account. The class demo was very interesting, and I was definitely interested in trying it out myself. I can definitely see use for this in my middle school social studies class.

I could Skype an expert on a particular social studies topic and have them do a little broadcast question/answer session with the class relating to what we're learning. This would be particularly amazing, because it would be live, the presenter could do it from home if they felt like it, and the students could ask questions in real time. It would also add a little variety to the classroom...they wouldn't just be learning from boring old Mrs. Patterson that day -- and they would get a chance to hear from an expert without having to bring in a "guest speaker".

It just blows me away that this is free and has video, when people in my office are still paying good money to conference call. What's with that?