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