APA NAEP Assignment

Happy Holidays everyone!

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and got to kick off their holidays in right fashion of over indulging in food, spending quality family time, and watching lots of good football! This all would have been possible for me if I was not a graduate student trying to keep up with everything but alas it will all be worth it when I have that diploma hanging on the wall! So can you believe it we have reached the FINAL assignment?!? I would like to pat myself and all my peers on the back for completeing this semester. It sure hasn't been easy but it has been very educaitonal, stimulating, and overall I feel like I am going to be a better teacher than most because of the knowledge I am walking away with from this class! So onto the final assignment....

Basically, Dr. Pierce gave a re-do on our action research project. For those of us who did not do well (ahem) have a chance to redeem ourselves with another paper. Our first requirement was to go to the National Center for Educational Statistics, (NCES) website and learn a little about what we were going to be researching. The NCES is the primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education. One of it is assessments are the National Assessment of Educational Progress, NAEP,  and it is the largest nationally representative and continuing assessment of what America's students know and can do in various subject areas. Assessments are conducted periodically in mathematics, reading, science, writing, the arts, civics, economics, geography, and U.S. history. For our research project Dr. Pierce wanted us to do a state comparison, (whatever state you are living in), of 8th grade mathematics score by gender. You can do state comparisons of your choice by going here NAEP state comparison. But for all intent purposes the final product of our comparison looked like this:

After this was completed you have the option of downloading your results into a Excel spreadsheet. And in true Ed Tech fashion this is what we did. After that was completed you needed to conduct some t-tests to prove whether gender affected mathematics scores. My results proved that gender did NOT affect mathematics scores so that can be laid to rest and the results can be read in my paper which will be linked at the end of my blog.

I must say that this assignment came a lot easier to me than the previous action research project. I don't know if it was how the results were labeled in the spreadsheet, or if it was all of the examples Dr. Pierce provided us on how to conduct the tests and how our results should be reported. All I know is that I feel as if I conducted this assignment with a slight bit more confidence and feeling like ok I finally got this stats stuff down.  I feel a bit relieved because I do know that being able to interpret, conduct, and report research is going to be a big role in my professional teaching career so I feel grateful that I have had two opportunities to learn this and I am sure that this will not be the last time it is part of my graduate studies. 

The NETS T that the FINAL assignment fulfilled was:

And here is the link to my NAEP assignment: The final assignment.

That's it blog world I hope you enjoyed the reading and hearing my about my progress in this class and walk away with a little bit more knowledge than before. I know I certainly have!

Ciao,

Andria

 

Appropriate a You Tube Video & Sign up for a You Tube Account

Good evening blog world!

   We had another assignment to complete this week and from the look of it (and keeping my fingers crossed) we are shifting into the video portion of the class. The second assignment this week was to appropriate a You Tube video and another one was sign up for a You Tube account for sole purpose of time saving I am combining the two assignments into 1 blog post. 

   I already had a You Tube account you can find my channel through my account name which is Andria636. That part was easy from what I remember it's free to set up just type in your e-mail address set up a password, enter your birth date and then accept terms and conditions. BAM! All set up and ready to go this was important because of the other part of this assignment which calls for you to upload a video into your channel.  The other part of the assignment Dr. Pierce wanted us to consider this scenario: "You found a video you really like or is perfect for some situation (learn a guitar song, barbecue a chicken, smoke a salmon) you pick. You love it,  you use it, and the last time  you went there you were greeted by the dreaded "This video has been removed by its owner".  Now you have the "I don't know how to get video blues." So the challenge was this 1) How do you get a video from You Tube (or Teacher Tube, Google Video) on your machine and 2) how would you then post the video back to the internet? Take step 1 first. Since the content is managed by an owner, it might be nice to expropriate it for ourselves. And here is the challenge and what the requirements are: Figure out how to save an online video (that you didn't produce) and save it to your computer. Include in your blog post what products you used, what file format resulted? Can you post it?  DON"T BUY ANYTHING.  DON"T USE A TRIAL VERSION.  Only freeware should be considered. You might have to download something but by this time in the semester, you should be use to that. 

  First the video I selected was something simple that I enjoy to do which is scrap booking. The You Tube video I selected was scrap booking for beginners to see the look before I uploaded it click below

I then turned to the higher power of GOOGLE to help me find a program that allowed me to save the you tube video to my computer and then upload back into You Tube. GOOGLE provided a plethora of programs you can use to save your videos and I chose the one that seemed the most simple to use, Save You Tube. 

Click on this link to be brought to the web page saveyoutube.com. The web page should look like this:

To use this software which allows you to download a video from You Tube in 3 steps:

1) copy-and-paste a You Tube video URL into the form and hit download

2) if it's your first time a warning box may pop-up just select "Run" to continue. This is perfectly safe and will not install software.

3) A list of download links will appear right click on the format you want and select "save as" to start your download. ***NOTE the format I used was FLV 480p ***

The video then downloaded I opened the file through real player

Then I went to You Tube made sure that I was signed into my account and chose to upload the video and saved it to my library. 

After I completed the task I received an e-mail from You Tube congratulating me on my first YouTube upload which gave me some tips  how to go even deep into a YouTube experience so make sure that you are on the look out for that e-mail it's very helpful. 

To view this video on my channel click here: Andria 636 scrapbooking.

Overall, this was a very simple assignment considering all the other downloading and saving we have done thus far in the class. I had zero complications and I don't anyone should as long as you can read directions and navigate YouTube. I can see this being helpful in the future for both personal and professional growth. Saving videos is a very good idea just because you don't know when the author is going to pull it and no one likes the feeling of not being prepared in front of a roomful of peers or students. So do the right thing save your video and upload to your channel.

The standard that this assignment met was:

So there you have my secret formula to appropriating a YouTube video and how to create an account.

Until the next assignment....

APA Writing Assignment

    This week's assignment involved taking everything we "learned" and results gathered from our hypothesis testing, data preparation, and our knowledge of how to use Microsoft Excel and apply it in a research paper using APA format. This entire unit has been nothing but a challenge for me and this paper fit right into that theme for me. I am overly confident in my abilities to write a research paper I have been doing it since advance placement courses in high school. But when I don't understand the concept of the hypothesis testing, and have zero confidence in my ability to interpret the results its very hard to convey my findings in a successful paper. Therefore, I feel as if I did this assignment in terms of content. I am confident that I have my APA settings and format correct in terms of margins, running heads, and references just lack of content because I did not understand what I was writing about.
   The assignment itself involved us picking two research questions, based on the data results from the online survey, and report their finding in an APA research paper. We had to create an APA document that summarizes our recent activity which were equivalent to the "Methodology", and "Results" section of a research paper based upon data analysis.
   The " methodology" section had to parallel an example provided to us in that we had to describe two research questions. Describe the sample, data collection, and survey. And finally, describe the data analysis.
   The "results" section had to parallel an example given to us in that the answers to our research questions must be answered in text form and with tables to reinforce our findings. We also had to include and list two references correctly sited according to APA formatting.
   So there you have the assignment and how I feel about it. I have uploaded my "completed" document to Google Docs and the link is listed below. Please feel free to take a look at it and judge for yourself my ability to complete this assignment.

Andria Snell APA Writing Assignment

  I feel that a variety of things could have changed my confidence and ability to complete this assignment: a) I had been able to attend the online chat meetings to see what other examples Dr. Pierce had given my peers and what feedback they were giving each other, b) if Dr. Pierce would have scheduled us a physical meeting time for us to be able to ask questions and receive hands on and verbal feedback without having to watch a screen cast or something. The concept of teaching is that every student learns and retains information and knowledge in different styles. For this particular unit of the class I was not mentally capable of learning the information the way that Dr. Pierce chose to portray that. That is not his fault nor is it mine but it something to take into consideration.

Finally we all know that there are standards to fulfill with every assignment and this particular assignment fulfills the following standard:

So there you have it. I am really hoping that this wrapped up this entire data unit of the class and the last four weeks of the course involves my confidence boosting up and that I can salvage my grade after this disaster.
Hope everyone has a great week see ya next assignment!

Andria

Quantitative Testing

Hey Everyone!!

Oh boy what a doozie this assignment was and I would like to add a disclaimer at this time: going forth I have no idea if I did this assignment correctly. So if you are a student in Dr. Pierce's Ed 6305 this fall and reading this for answers I assure you that mine may not be correct. I also 96% guarantee that I have different numbers than what you came up with. Why you may ask but I have no idea if I did this correct or not. So now that it's out there take my assignment for what its worth and please please please feel free to reach out to me if you want to discuss what we may or may not be doing. If you are NOT a student in Dr. Pierce's class then please feel free to reach out to me to teach me what the heck I am supposed to be doing! So now that the air is clear let's get on with the rest of this blog!

If you have been following the blogs then you will see from previous blogs that we have been working on a action research project. Last blog we had to create hypothesis research questions to begin, well researching. This assignment was to take all of the data provided to us by Dr. Pierce and preform t tests on the results comparing two variances. This is also called bivariate analysis: a study that examines the relationship between two variables. If you would like to check out a site that helps explain all the different definitions of variables and etc.. please take a look at this AP Statistics Tutorial. So in order to conduct this analysis we must do a t test assuming equal variances. In order to conduct a t test you must have access to Microsoft Excel and of course have the data analysis pack installed (check out previous blog to see how to install that). The interpretation of the t test results depends on how big your p value is. If this makes any sense to you then good blessings to you because it took me a long time to interpret this let alone how to perform a t test and understand it. But lets move on...

Below you are going to find a link to a worksheet provided by Dr. Pierce which allowed us to practice doing t tests. I highly encourage everyone to look at it for two reasons 1) for my results to the practice t tests and 2) it provides more insight into why we perform t tests and how to interpret the results. Plus there are two really good screen casts made by Dr. Pierce on how to do a t test so for you newbies to this you will see where we are going with this.  I personally have looked at this worksheet for countless hours watched the screen casts more times than I count and can honestly say I still don't know if I am doing this correctly. And I feel better knowing that I am not allowed a lot of my class mates are having the same issues as me so I know that the boat I am sitting in is very crowded. 

Practice T-Test

Here is my thing I see how beneficial this can be. I understand why Dr. Pierce wants us to learn this information and be able to effectively use it. I just can't seem to grasp how to do it so my confidence level in being able to educate students or other educators to perform this or explain the importance of this is very low. Which is out of character to every other assignment we have completed thus far in the course. I feel like this type of assignment would better be instructed through a monitored hands on lab where the instructor would be able to face to face discuss a student's struggle and show demonstrations first hand on how to correct these struggles. I also feel that moving on from this assignment to the next is nearly impossible if you can't get passed this one but none the less I will keep everyone posted on how I am doing with this assignment and if I am doing this correctly it will come as a complete shock to me!

The standard that this assignment completes would be NETS_T 5. This assignment is really something we would teach students or incorporate into lesson plans but it is designed to help us grow professionally in our trade. Again I see and appreciate the value I just wish I had more confidence in my ability to do it. 

Again I will keep everyone posted! Hope everyone else finds their way through this!

Andria

Data Analysis

Keeping up with the action research project today's assignment involves developing the research questions and hypothesis for my pending research project based again on the data provided by Dr. Pierce. after completing the previous two activities I have become fairly familiar with the data collected (and excel). Based on this you can say that there are several discrete factors, (male/female, teaching/not teaching), and several continuous variables such as browser types, MBTI, and quiz scores which Dr Pierce made up for this data collection.

Based on these variables the assignment tasks is to identify a dependent and a independent variable I wish to examine then develop 2 research questions based on the data. For each research question a hypothesis and a null hypothesis statement must be stated. Let's pause here for a minute, if you aren't sure what a hypothesis is click here for a great link to help you understand what hypothesis is. If you aren't sure what a null hypothesis is click here for a great link to help you with that. Now that you understand what a hypothesis is you may be asking yourself, "how do I write one?" I found this website to be very helpful feel free to check it out! I forgot to add that if you do not know what the difference is between independent and depended variables are check out this link aide it is extremely helpful!

So after reviewing all the tools and aides I looked into here are my two research questions.


1) What is the relationship between females with teaching experience and higher quiz scores? Based on the collected data it can be said that females with teaching experience score higher on quizzes than females who do not currently teach.
Independent variable: female and age
Dependent variable: quiz score
hypothesis: females with teaching experience score higher on quizzes than females who do not currently teach.
null hypothesis: having teaching experience has no effect on quiz scores for female students.


2)  What is the relationship between a females age and their millennial score? Based on collected data it can be proven that females in the 27-29 age range  have higher millennial scores than females older or younger.
Independent variable: female and age
Dependent variable: Millennial score
hypothesis: females in the age range 27-29 have higher pew scores than those younger or older.
null hypothesis: age range does not matter when it comes to a females score on the millennial score.


The standards that this assignment completed was:

I think by having us develop a action research project from scratch shows that as future educators we  are committed  to making the educational system better by continuously trying to improve it.

Now I must provide this disclaimer: I am not 100% confident in my ability to write these questions and hypothesis correctly. But I am going to submit them and see what criticism I receive from Dr. Pierce stay tuned and  I will let you know how it goes!

Andria

Excel Basics

**RANT ALERT**

There is not to many programs out there that frustrate me or intimidate me and now for the second time this semester in this class I am intimidated by: Excel! Definitely not my strong suit and I haven't used it in so long I feel like I am the blind teaching the blind right now. But alas I will prevail I always do and if I don't then someone throw out a lifeline and show me what I am doing wrong. 

**RANT OVER**

So this is what today's activity mirrors the Action Research process in that this is an example of getting data and doing a rudimentary data analysis by expanding the use of your spreadsheet. Dr. Pierce says that we should already know how to use the built in functions of Excel, (this is where I am foggy), and calculate formulas, (again not so much), and then he wants to teach us more tips and tricks to Excel. Now not be a negative nancy but if I can't even do the basics I don't know if I am ready to hit the tip and tricks. But for now lets move on. 

Next we need to prepare our data given to us by Dr. Pierce. The data given was collected from the responses given to Dr. Pierce from our mid-term self assessment survey so it consisted of male/female, browser used, blog posts etc...So what we needed to do was take our text values and turn them into discrete numerical values so we can analyze statistically. So what I did was take the excel sheet provided to us from Dr. Pierce and took the text values and turned them into numeric values as follows:

Sex: Male=1 Female=2

Browser used: Chrome=1, Internet Explorer=2, Firefox=3, Safari=4

Occupation: Teaching=1, Not Teaching=2

MTBI: ENFJ=1, INFJ=2, ISFP=3. INFP=4, ISTJ=5, ESTP=6, ISFJ=7, INTJ=8, IIFJ=9, ESTJ=10, ENFG=11, ESFJ=12, ESFP=13

All other categories were already in numeric vale so they could left as is. This is a little preview of what my excel sheet looked like:

After doing this I needed to calculate the average blog posts and compare my number of blog posts to see if I was above or below average. The average number of blog posts for this class is 15.44 so let's just round down to 15. My number of blog posts as to when data was collected was 15. So I am spot on with the class average which makes me feel reassured that I am up to date in all class content and assignments!

The standard that this assignment met was:

So that's a wrap on this assignment. I'm off to ready chapters 4-6 of Excel for Dummies. 

Until next time

Andria

Research Overview

Happy Sunday everyone!

It appears that the second half of the semester we will be working on a action research project! Dr. Pierce says that as a teacher you need to be doing action research and empirically investigating your performance and that of your students to 1) stay focused 2) use data to improve performance, and 3) raise the standard of professional practice in your setting. He is seeking to disrupt the norms of public education in WV by lighting an intellectual fire in us and assisting our intellectual ability to do some data analysis in our fields.

In order to develop our hypothesis and do our testing we will need access to Microsoft excel. Thus brings us to our assignment install Microsoft Excel data analysis tool pack apparently we will also need this excel "add-in". If you have Excel 2007 edition click on the prior link and you will be directed to directions on how to install it into your excel. If you have Excel 2003 you need to click here for directions.

I would have never figured out how to install the tool pack had it not been for a class mate of mine because the link provided to us from Dr. Pierce was for 2003 and I searched for about an hour on how to "add in" the pack. After looking at our message board I realized that this particular classmate had the same problem as me and provided the current directions for excel 2007. So beware of the difference between the two versions and choose accordingly which set of directions works for your version of excel.

This is what your direction for installment should look like if you are using Excel 2007.















This assignment although not difficult was time consuming because I couldn't figure out how to install on version 2007. Had the directions been more clear and a link provided for both versions this would have been a lot easier.

The standard that this assignment follows is:

I hope that anyone else that may have had difficulty with this assignment found this blog to be helpful and if you are just reading hope you found it to be educational. 

Andria

Self Asessment at Midterm

Wow! Can you believe we have reached the halfway point in this semester! It's crazy to look back on all my previous blog posts and see how far I've come since this class has started my knowledge has grown leaps and bounds! I also feel so much more comfortable using the different tools like jing, snipping, and bender converter. I am confident in my abilities to create podcast and even blogging (something I had never done before this class) and for that I am grateful and excited to see what I learn in the second half of this course.

For this assessment I was required to fill out a survey made my Dr. Pierce that required me to reflect on my previous work of the semester. During this reflection I learned that I have 15 blog posts, 7 discussion postings on black board, my recent PEW score of 93, and my MBTI code.  We also had to define TPACK in our own words and as if we were an interview with Dr. Pierce this was my definition:

" TPACK is a theoretical framework for understanding teacher knowledge required for effective technology integration. The TPACK framework was proposed in order to emphasize the need to situate technology knowledge within content and pedagogical knowledge. TPACK considers teachers’ knowledge as complex and multifaceted, approaches that focus on the attainment of

technology skills separate from pedagogy and content. TPACK acts as a useful framework for thinking about what knowledge teachers must have to integrate technology into teaching and how they might develop this knowledge. At the heart of the TPACK framework, is the interplay of three primary forms of knowledge: Content (CK), Pedagogy (PK), and Technology (TK). The TPACK framework builds on Shulman’s idea of Pedagogical Content Knowledge. Teachers who have TPACK act with an intuitive understanding of the interplay between the three basic components of knowledge. "

I think that having us reflect our work at midterm in a survey like this refreshes our head of how far we've come and what all we have learned. Something like this would be very useful in a classroom because the student can provide me with their personal reflection of their progress in the classroom. I could also see where they stand in achieving the learning outcomes for the course. I could use the collective results of this survey to see if I needed to go back and re-educate the students on a particular unit. For example, if the majority of students could not define TPACK, as stated in the learning objectives, then that is something I should reflect on re-evaluate my teaching methods and teach my students again. It's a good progress report for both the teacher and the student.

The standards that this type of survey would follow would be:

NETS-T Standard 2: Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments particularly provide students with multiple and varied formative and summative assessments aligned with content and technology standards and use resulting data to inform learning and teaching.

So that's a wrap the half way point has been reached! Stay posted the second half is on its way!

Andria

Pew Millineal Test

Today Dr. Pierce wanted us to take the Pew Millennial Test/Survey. This survey consisted of fourteen questions that related to modern technology and times. For example, it asked if in your household you have a land line only, a cell phone only, or a land line and cell phone. Another questions asked in the past 24 hours how many text messages did you receive, and if in the past 24 hours if you watched more than an hour of television, played video games, or read a newspaper. So now that you get the gist of what the survey consisted of here are my results:

93% Millennial! The higher you score, the more you have in common with members of the millennial generation. According to the timeline provided the millennial generation seems to be those born circa 1981-present. I was born in 1982 so that makes me fall into this category. I completely agree with this result I am very into technology staying up to date with what the latest and greatest gadgets are and keeping my current gadgets up-to-date on software and what not. I admit that I communicate more through e-mail and text messages and I don't have a subscription to a newspaper instead I rely on the Internet to provide me with local, and national news.

If you want to see where you stand within the millennial generation click here!

This survey was fun to take and delivered results that I already knew but still good to have confirmation of. See ya all next time!

Andria

Personality Blog 2

The second part of the personality assignment was to take the Jung Typology Test. After completing the questionnaire you will obtain:
1)Your type formula according to Carl Jung and Isabel Briggs Myers typology along with the strengths of the preferences
2)The description of your personality type
3)The list of occupations and educational institutions where you can get relevant degree or training, most suitable for your personality type - Jung Career Indicator

After completing the 72 yes/no questionnaire my personality type according to the Jung Typology Test is ENFJ: Extraverted, Intuitive, Feeling, and Judging with high percentages in each category. You can see this below.

According to Keirsey the results of this personality test would categorize me as a Idealist: A portrait of a teacher. Click here to read more about this temperament. Keirsey says that even more than the other Idealists,Teachers have a natural talent for leading students or trainees toward learning, or as Idealists like to think of it, they are capable of calling forth each learner's potentials. Teachers (around two percent of the population) are able - effortlessly, it seems, and almost endlessly-to dream up fascinating learning activities for their students to engage in. In some Teachers, this ability to fire the imagination can amount to a kind of genius which other types find hard to emulate. But perhaps their greatest strength lies in their belief in their students. Teachers look for the best in their students, and communicate clearly that each one has untold potential, and this confidence can inspire their students to grow and develop more than they ever thought possible. Teachers like things settled and organized, and will schedule their work hours and social engagements well ahead of time -- and they are absolutely trustworthy in honoring these commitments. Valuing as they do interpersonal cooperation and harmonious relations, Teachers are extraordinarily tolerant of others, are easy to get along with, and are usually popular wherever they are.Teachers are highly sensitive to others, which is to say their intuition tends to be well developed. Certainly their insight into themselves and others is unparalleled. Without a doubt, they know what is going on inside themselves, and they can read other people with uncanny accuracy. Teachers also identify with others quite easily, and will actually find themselves picking up the characteristics, emotions, and beliefs of those around them. Because they slip almost unconsciously into other people's skin in this way, Teachers feel closely connected with those around them, and thus show a sincere interest in the joys and problems of their employees, colleagues, students, clients, and loved ones.


Although not exactly the same the results of the JUNG and MBTI both placed me into the Idealist temperament category. I think that the previous result more shows my personal life and that this result shows more of my career personality. I believe that a person can have those two distinct personalities. 


Because of this personality type I can effectively lead a group of people because of my verbal abilities. As a ENFJ personality as a teacher I would consider people the highest of priorities and communicate personal opinion and willingness to become involved. I can also communicate in speech, particularly face-to face and publicly charismatic. Thus making a a good group leader because of all these positive influences.


I encourage everyone to take both these personality tests and see where you fall it will help you both personally and professionally.


Catch everyone next time!!
Andria

Personality Blog 1

This is a cool assignment to learn more about our personalities. I love any sort of personality test that interprets who I am as an individual and majority of the time those tests are spot on which amazes me! We were required to take the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) personality inventory. There were four categories: Favorite World, Information, Decisions, and Structure under each category two preferences were listed after you selected you preference in each category you have your own personality type which can be expressed as a code with four letters. You can see this below:

My 4 letter code was INFP which indicates that I am "Idealistic, loyal to their values and to people who are important to them. Want an external life that is congruent with their values. Curious, quick to see possibilities, can be catalysts for implementing ideas. Seek to understand people and to help them fulfill their potential. Adaptable, flexible, and accepting unless a value is threatened." Which I completely agree with!

Then you can take your four letter code and go to Keirsey Temperament Website and find your temperament personality. Again my four letter code was INFP according to Keirsey I fall into the healer temperament. Keirsey describes the healer as having a profound sense of idealism that comes from a strong personal sense of right and wrong. Healers live a fantasy -filled childhood- they are the prince or princess of fairy-tales-an attitude which, sadly, is frowned up, or even punished by parents. With parents who want them to get their heads out of the clouds, Healers begin to believe they are bad to be so fanciful, so dreamy, and can come to see themselves as ugly ducklings. If you want to read more about healers click here. 


I definitely agree that I do fall into the healer temperament. Most people say and I agree that I never seem to lose my sense of wonder. A lot of people might say that I see life through rose-colored glasses and to me that is ok. I also agree with this because I am highly intuitive about people. I rely heavily on my intuitions to guide me and use my discoveries to search for value in life. I am always on a continuous mission to find the truth and meaning underlying things. I take everything that I learn and sift it through my value system to see if it can better or alter my path in life. So I think that the MBTI is spot on with me and it describes my personality to a tee. 


The MBTI framework can improve performance in a learning environment by providing insight into a child's learning style which can then help the student, the student's parents, and the teacher increase self-awareness and general awareness to the students strengths and weaknesses as learners.

If you have the time take the MBTI inventory and compare yourself you might just be surprised to how accurate it really is. By performing a MBTI on students a teacher would be satisfying NETS-T standard 1 facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity.

The NETS-T standard this would follow would be:

1. Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity

Teachers use their knowledge of subject matter, teaching and learning, and technology to facilitate experiences that advance student learning, creativity, and innovation in both face-to-face and virtual environments. Teachers:

c.

promote student reflection using collaborative tools to reveal and clarify students’ conceptual understanding and thinking, planning,and creative processes

 
See ya next time!!
Andria

Audacity Project 2

So the follow up to the previous blog:

After the editing of the project was completed the project needed to be saved. (I highly recommend saving the project throughout the entire process so you do not lose a single edit). The method of saving the project is to save it to a MP3 sound file. This requires downloading the Audacity Lame encoder. The lame encoder is another free download and it is necessary to download if you want those MP3 files.

PODBEAN:

The next part of the assignment was to create an account with podbean. The free account is all that was needed to after I registered for my account the next mission was to upload my audacity project into a podcast. 

So before you listen to my podcast here is what my "story" is about: motivational swimming music. I was a competitive swimmer for many years and what got me to reach higher mental levels and better swimming results was my music. So the podcast you are about to listen to is highlights of my favorite motivational music I listened to throughout my swimming career. I hope everyone enjoys.

Andria Snell PODCAST

It should bring you to a screen that looks like this:

I enjoyed this task because it was very challenging both mentally and creatively. I know for sure that I will use this knowledge in my future career as a teacher and as a individual. Before this assignment I had no idea how to organize yet publish a podcast now I feel like I'm experienced enough to regularly publish podcasts for whatever situation my call for one. I do think teaching this to students would be a bit difficult especially for little ones but I can see it being a great tool to help creatively deliver lesson plans and reinforce learning. It's also a great tool to reach out to parents so that at home they could listen to what is going on the their child's education. You can also use this to communicate with other peers and gather ideas from other people. Again I see audacity and podbean becoming very useful tools in my career. 

The NETS-T that this assignment fulfilled are:

particularly by using audacity and podbean teachers are able to demonstrate fluency in technology systems and the transfer of current knowledge to new technologies and situations. Also teachers communicate relevant information and ideas effectively to students, parents, and peers using a variety of digital-age media and formats.

I hope that everyone enjoyed my podcast I hope that I completed the assignment they it was meant to be completed and I'll catch everyone in the next blog. 

Audacity Project

The project that we were given this week is a project based on using Audacity software. Audacity is a free open source software for recording and editing sound. The task was to create a podcast that is a narrative about something. I was allowed to pick the topic but the podcast had to be a mix of my voice and a minimum of 8 songs, sounds, linked together on a common element or combined to enhance the theme. Excerpts from the songs had to last 5-20 seconds with minor exceptions when necessary.

Taken this is all in was a tad bit overwhelming and to tell the truth this was the most time consuming and difficult project I have had to date in this particular class. Not to say that the challenge wasn't fun because in a way it was. It was quite the feeling after accomplishing this because by reading the directions I was about as lost as a deer in headlights. Good thing that Dr. Pierce is wickedly awesome because, as always, he provided great examples to listen too. Now if you listened to his example you were probably even more intimidated by this assignment. I listened to it and thought to myself, "oh yeah right I have to create that"?!? But alas with some Audacity tutorial help the project started to become a reality.

The content of this project came mostly from us speaking. We had to use a microphone either built into the computer or an external microphone. Then we had to pull media content, (songs, or sounds), from whatever site we chose. I gathered all my song content from either what was already on my computer through my media player or youtube. By using youtube I still had to get that particular video clip downloaded into MP3 form that's where our past assignment, bender converter, came into play. By using bender converted I was able to download those clips from youtube into mp3 titles and then I was able to import those files into my audacity project.

Once I watched all the tutorials on how to navigate and use the audacity program I then began to make my project come to life. With the aid of editing tools I was able to edit  my "audio tracks" by time sequence, delete unwanted parts of media, and then add special effects such as fade in and out to imported media clips. Once I got into the flow of how Audacity works the task became more and more simple you just had to establish a rhythm and keep going for it. One thing I did notice that probably made the project the most time consuming is the need to go back and listen to your project after each addition of a new audio track. If I wanted my project to flow it took precise timing and a lot of editing to make sure the fluidity was there. I also had to go back and do volume control so that music wasn't overpowering my voice. It was these little things that made the task very time consuming. Below you are going to view my audacity project.

I am going to publish a second blog to show you the completion of this project. 

Voicethread

Hello Blog World!!!

This week in the exciting world of Education 6305 we had to complete an assignment called VoiceThread. VoiceThread is a tool by which you can meet, chat, discuss all on line. If you visited the website then you learned more about VoiceThread; if you didn't hear is your chance. With VoiceThread, group conversations are collected and shared in one place from anywhere in the world. Plus there is no software to install major plus! So what is a VoiceThread. It is a collaborative multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, and videos and allows people to navigate pages and leave comments in five ways- using voice (mic or telephone), text, audio file, or video (via a web cam). You can share a VoiceThread with friends, students, and colleagues for them to record comments too. VoiceThreads can even be embedded to show and receive comments on other websites and exported to MP3 players or DVDs to play as archival movies. So if you didn't know now you did!

For class we had watch this video What is a VoiceThread if you are interested in what and how VoiceThread works, (which is pretty cool I must admit), I highly suggest watching it. It is a great introduction into VoiceThread and how it works. Then we had to sign up for a voicethread account. This is very simple to do just go to the VoiceThread website and hit sign in or register link it is completely free so don't be afraid about cost.

Next part of the assignment we had to watch two videos. These videos were both presentations given by Sir Ken Robinson. Both of these videos had themes that related to each other with many other points but the reoccurring theme was that modern educational system world wide are failing students because we are capping their creative capacity. He goes on to explain how and why we as educators must try to make the change and switch educational directions. We must go from the "production line mentality" and we must start allowing our students to explore divergent thinking. All in all let their creative sides show and encourage all students to explore all their special interests and abilities. We must start waking them up instead of anaesthetising them with ADHD drugs. These two videos were very interesting and I must say really woke me up to the change that should and needs to be made in the educational system. Again the presentation was made by Ken Robinson I highly recommend checking him out!

After viewing the videos we had to go to this VoiceThread and respond to how you are or will make a difference in the classroom according to Ken Robinson's presentation. You could leave your response by voice, or comment the point is that you made it. This is really cool because the entire class will have responded and you get to hear each other voices instead of reading which creates a more creative aspect to learning.

So how can students use VoiceThread in classes or projects? VoiceThread can
be helpful at increasing student engagement and motivation while activating learning.  The cool thing about VoiceThread is that teachers can use it in many educational settings with students in general
education, with students considered at risk, and with students with disabilities. Students can participate in learning activities designed within the VoiceThread environment as part of a whole class, in small groups, or independently. VoiceThread can serve as an archive for students to go back and gain reference or further knowledge for future classes or subjects.  The best part is that once a student learns to interact in the VoiceThread world they can use it over and over again. Teach a student in second grade and when they are a Senior they will still be applying that same knowledge. Again a very cool tool that can be used in any setting at school or as a homework assignment and it can fit into any content area! As an educator I really see the value in this tool and look forward to using it.

To wrap up the assignment lets take a look at where VoiceThread fits into according to the NETS_T standards.

Ok Bloggers until next time!
Andria

Jing Screencast

Hello again! Well another assignment going into the blog history, Jing Screen cast. 

Everyone remembers jing right?!? If not click on my archives and read up on the original Jing post that should catch you up to speed. So one of the other great advantages to using Jing is to be able to capture videos,(screen casts),  and utilize the videos to share with your peers, the Internet, or classroom. This assignment required us to create a screen cast, using jing, that display how to do something on your computer. I chose to create my screen cast demonstrating how to create a word cloud using Wordle. If you haven't read my previous blog about Wordle that is great because you will really take advantage of this screen cast. However, if you have then please watch and provide feedback so that I can know where I need to improve my screen casting abilities. Click to view my screen cast.  I created that link by capturing my video through Jing, saving it, then sharing via screen cast which automatically generates the link for you to share with whomever. 

This activity wasn't what I would classify as hard but it wasn't easy either. I found that in order to create my screen cast I needed a touch of patience, an informative tutorial, and a peer example. Note to reader I had to view these items many times in order to fully understand what I was trying to accomplish. I think the important thing to remember is that anything you try that is new is never going to be easy so just sit down breathe and explore you will get it!

As for the NETS-T standards this activity covers:

Again this activity wasn't the easiest one of the semester so far but it did teach me a lot. I am not confident in my abilities to create and capture these screen casts and look forward to using this tool again.

Until the next blog,

Andria

Benderconverter

Happy Monday!
Well after an emotional weekend remembering 9-11-01 I woke up to reality today that life always goes on! Today's assignment involves using the multimedia tool benderconverter. One thing I can say about this class is that with every activity/assignment we do I am learning about something completely new and foreign to me. Not that this is a bad thing it is a very good thing just frightens me every time I go to learn the new tool. However, another growing trait with this class is that every new tool is easy to use if you just give it the time to show itself as being easy. So is the case with benderconverter!

Benderconverter is an easy-to-use online application for converting audio and audio files. Want to know more click here. So it's really cool you can take music you find from youtube and convert it into IPOD or I phone format. Best part about benderconverter is that it's fast, free, and friendly! How does it work? First you must go to the website and download the tool this includes adding real player to your computer. Next you select the format you want to convert your file to. Second step click the browse button and select the file you want to convert. Third click convert and wait for the process to be complete. Finally, you want to download the conversion so that you may transfer or apply it to whatever you are trying to create. For the assignment we were required to download the tool and find a video on youtube that we wanted to share in either a PowerPoint presentation or a google document. For my video I chose a really cool slide show of modern history set to Billy Joel's We Didn't Start the Fire. This was really simply I found the video on youtube using real player clicked the download video then chose the format I wanted to convert it to, mp3, now it is in my library and I can use it whenever I want also using the real player there are option to share it with all your social networks which is an added bonus! (So if you find that really rare Dave Matthews Band song you can share it with the rest of Dave Nation!) Below you can see the MP3 in real player!

Step 2 of the assignment we needed to create that PowerPoint or google document presentation that has the actual video embedded into it. You are going to see this just below.

If you would like to view the entire presentation or watch the video,(which is really cool and creative), you can click We Didn't Start the Fire presentation. Hope you enjoy!

So all this work and what NETS T standards are we achieving let's take a look!

Not going to lie now that I know about Benderconverter I can see myself using it all the time! Not just for classroom activities but also for getting files onto all my tech gadgets! Hope everyone has a productive and happy Monday catch ya on the next assignment!

Andria

Jeopardy

Oh rainy day = lazy days! But alas not for the graduate student. Today's assignment is going to be my favorite of the semester just because of my appreciation of Jeopardy. You see it is not abnormal to walk into my parents house around 7:00 p.m. and find at least 5 people gathered around the television attempting to show off their knowledge skills to each other in a very intense battle of the brain. So when I saw we had a Jeopardy assignment my brain was already clicking on what the overall theme of my Jeopardy review would be. Using jeopardylabs I created a Jeopardy review game reviewing an eighth grade Constitution unit.
To review or test your own constitutional knowledge you can click here to play. From that link you can also download, or edit my game to your own specifications. If for some reason you have a problem with that link, as we all sometimes do, you can also gain access to my gain through my jing cast.

Using points ranging from 100-500 and one double jeopardy questions the categories included amendment, legislative, executive, judicial, and ABCD just a hodgepodge of questions. I believe that the hardest part of this assignment is making sure that your questions match up the point value. You want to make sure that your students are successful at this game not only for knowledge retention and future success on assessments. But also that they are having fun so if questions are too light they will get bored. If questions are too hard they will become frustrated finding that balance is absolute key to success in my opinion.
Below you will find what NETS Standards this activity falls into compliance with.

I encourage everyone to use Jeopardy at least once a semester. It is such a fun creative way in engaging your students learning retention.

Til next may the sun come out tomorrow!
Andria

Word Clouds

This assignment was to create a word cloud using the wordle program. Word clouds are a great visual tool that are fun and creative way to capture your student's attention. Wordle is a very easy to use program you have three different options to create your word cloud; you can enter in a bunch of text and hit create, you can type in a url of any blog, blog feed, or any other web page that has an Atom or RSS feed, or finally you can enter in a user name to see their tags. Any way you want to go about it you can create a word cloud from the method of your choice. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. After you have created the cloud of your desire you can then share it with friends or save it to wordle's gallery for all the public to view.

The assignment was to create a word cloud of something in your field and post it to your blog. I chose to create a world cloud using the star spangled banner. I chose the star spangled banner for many reasons but mainly because if I was teaching right now I would be preparing to reflect on the tenth anniversary of 9/11/01 the day that changed America. This would be geared for grades 3-6 the students would learn about the history of the star spangled banner, our flag it symbols and meanings. Students would be asked questions as to where they have seen the flag, what does our flag mean to them, and what do they think the flag meant to the men and women on 9/11. I would then have this world cloud projected on the screen or even laminated and posted on the wall. Each child would be given a copy of the star spangled banner learn to sing it and then discuss the lyrics. This wonderful lesson plan was inspired by ideas provided by scholastic learning if you would like to see more of this lesson plan you can always view it here.

As you can see above I changed the color scheme of of my world cloud to red, white, and blue to emphasize patriotism. I also changed the font to Berylium to add a little bit of old fashion hand writing to it. I left my layout at mostly horizontal because majority of the words were too long to go vertical. Overall, this was a short fun creative activity that can really leave an impact on your classroom if used correctly. My word cloud was saved to wordle's gallery. I also used jing to create a screen cast as another option for viewing. I think that this activity covers NETS-T 1 (facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity) and NETS-2 (design and develop digital-age learning experiences and assessments).

That wraps up this assignment hope everyone enjoys and has a happy and safe labor day!
Andria

Jing Image

Wow! I never knew so many different copy and paste tools existed out there! Today's assingment introdcued me to the copy and paste tool Jing. Once again I had never heard of Jing but now that has been brought into my life I think it will serve me well or vice versa either way I look at I know that I will get a lot of use out of this program. With jing you can take a picture or make a short video of what you see on your computer screen  save it your computer in the folder of your choice and then create a screencast (link) which then you can share it instantly with friends via e-mail, web, or social networking sites, or surprise a blog!Before I let anxiety hit me I watched this video to find out how jing was not going to complicate my browsing experience and work but it would actually make my life easier! Go ahead check it you won't regret it!

The image I created which you can see above is a blank food pyramid template. I  used Jing's image editng tools to create shapes, text boxs, and arrows to fill in the pyramid showing the learner what and how much they need to consume on a weekly and with some daily basis. I could use this in multiple ways whether teaching a introduction to health class or even as an athletic coach you could use this template to teach your students or athletes proper nutrition. I chose to use different colors because some individuals are visual learners and they might associate color with catagory so I wanted to make sure that I was in compliance with helping different learning styles. If you would like to see a larger image you can view my screencast by clicking here. I feel that this activity again helped me use a digital tool to models effective information to my peers and future students (NETS-T 3).

Learning about both the snipping tool and jing this week has not only extended my technology base but also has introduced me to a world of copy and paste that is only going to make working significantly easier and a lot faster!

Snipping Tool

The Snipping Tool activity was an activity to teach us how to use windows snipping tool (something  I didn't even know existed! So basically this tool exists in Microsoft Windows 7 and Vista. You You can use Snipping Tool to capture a screen shot, or snip, of any object on your screen, and then annotate, save, or share the image. You can see for yourself by viewing this short demonstrative video.
As recommended by Dr. Pierce I see how this tool is most useful if you create a shortcut to your desktop so that you have instant access to it when needed. Learning how to use this tool definitely demonstrates that I can faciliatate effective use of digital tools to use information resources to support research and learning (NETS-T 3).

To demonstrate I snipped the course activity list for a couple of reasons. Reason one being that blackboard went down for a little bit today without having that access to the course list I was up the creek without a paddle in successfully completing today's activities. So after some resourceful thinking I obtained the link outside of blackboard and now have it located in my Diigo library, favorite places, and on my blog. I guess its safe to say I will never be in that situation again. Here's the screenshot of it and if any of my peers have any questions they now know where to look. The snip itself is a full screen snip in which I captured the entire screen. Once the snip I has been made you also have the options of highlighting what you want your classroom to pay attention too (you can see I highlighted the current activity we are on). Also you have a pen option in which you can make notes on the screen for demonstrative purposes I drew a star on the activity we are on.

This tool is very useful and practical and have a feeling that it will come in handy more times than once! So once again another day in Ed Tech and I just keep growing from information learned!
Until the next activity!
Andria