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