Quirky Corner

Evaluation of Techquest

katielorey@hotmail.com (Katherine Lorey) — Fri, 7 May 2010 13:12:00 -0700

The project ended up going pretty well and the students learned many things about publishing to the website. Currently, the website is not actually being published and won't be until next year. Students have been taking the articles they have used in old issues of the newspaper and have been putting them into the website. They also have experimented with some of the other functions including the flickr photo album, the other photo album provided by Weebly, blogging, and video. They picked up on the design pretty quickly because it is so limited, but they are disappointed they are not going to be given more freedom in their design. That is one thing many of the students love about newspaper- that they are able to express themselves artistically in both the written word and in design. Because the students will still publish some special issues, I will most likely allow them to get extra creative with their layouts so that they feel excited about their designs. Hopefully this will meet my students' needs.

One thing I would have done differently if I did this again was already mentioned in the above paragraphs. I would get my students extremely excited about publishing the newspaper online by showing them examples of other online newspapers. This would motivate them to take ownership of the site and to get excited to publish to the site too. I also would raise some money to purchase an account from a site that would provide us with more creativity when it comes to design. I probably would choose one that costs around $400 to start up and $200 to maintain every year, because they are specially designed for newspapers, offer the students more opportunities and functions, will probably upload images and videos more quickly, are more appealing to the eye, and are much more professional. My students and I will most likely have a paper drive at the beginning and at the end of next year so that we can raise money to provide this site the following year. In addition, many of the students were excited that they will be able to publish videos to the site next year. We don't currently have a video camera, but a colleague of mine recently told me of the educators' discount on the flip cameras that hook up directly to the computer. I plan to purchase two of these to begin the videographing, and then hopefully advance from there. The Flip video cameras can only hold about an hours worth of footage, and I'm not sure how much editing can be done, but I do know that they hook up directly to a computer with the usb drive attached to the camera. The students and I can learn the basics of videography and then move on to more advanced things from there.

One of the most important lessons I learned is to be patient with weebly and to publish, publish, publish all of the time so as not to lose any work. This is also something I found very important to tell students too, since they will be the ones actually using weebly to post to the website next year. One thing I was worried about with having to publish the work all of the time was that my administrators wouldn't have prior review of the articles, which they currently have with the print we publish now. Luckily, there is a function on weebly that allows you to password protect the site prior to accessing the page. Right now, the site is password protected so that no one can access it besides the students who know the password. A few other things we learned while publishing to the site with the paid access are the following:

The flickr album uploads much faster than photos that are posted to the photo album application provided. With the limited amount of time we have in class, it is much more time efficient to use flickr. However, each person is only allowed a limited number of photos through flickr per month, and that quota fills up fast when you are posting flickr photo albums for several events throughout the month. In order to have more photos, one can purchase a larger account through flickr. I have not checked out pricing yet, but plan to do so next year when we are getting ready for the first issue.
The YouTube videos work very quickly, but it does take some time to upload a home video that is not posted to YouTube to the site. If you are going to have both photos and videos posted to the site, it is probably good to have two or three different students in charge of different sections of the website to make more efficient use of class time. I plan to have an editor for every single page of the paper. We will see how this works when there are six different people accessing and editing the site! Hopefully it will work well and we won't have to adjust the system much!
It also takes time to upload embedded documents. Often times there will be an "error" message that comes up. Most of the time we just needed to try again and the document would end up uploading, but sometimes it would take several tries to upload the same document. I have no idea why it works at times and doesn't work at others.
There is limited space on your account. If you have multiple webpages under the same paid account, your storage space gets taken up quickly. If a person plans to use a website for a newspaper, it would be a great idea to have a paid account set up for JUST that web page and not for others. I had my students working on the website, which is in the same account as my personal web page. Thank goodness my students and I have a great rapport, but I might be nervous in some instances if students had access to my personal web page and could alter my image or my information.

Techquest project implementation

katielorey@hotmail.com (Katherine Lorey) — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 16:40:00 -0700

If the link to the podcast does not work through the title, please click here to find a copy of this on a website I am in the process of building.

Internet Research for Techquest Project

katielorey@hotmail.com (Katherine Lorey) — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 16:47:00 -0700

For my Techquest, I plan to implement an online newspaper into my classroom. I am preparing to incorporate some of it this year, but will really implement the majority of it next year when a group of both advanced and beginning students enter the class.

The Process of Researching

Researching for articles to support my decision to move the newspaper online was surprisingly difficult for me. I started by searching for “online newspapers”+”high school” and conducting other similar Boolean searches on Google. Needless to say, I did not get the results I was looking for, so I tried Google Scholar and the databases we have access to at the school. Again, the results I got were not those I was hoping for. The only valuable resources I found were newspapers that had already gone online. While these will be very beneficial in the construction of the site, I still wanted some research to support my decision to move online. The articles I did find on the databases and on Google Scholar were published in the 90s and were very outdated. Thankfully, Sue emailed me some links she found using the Internet Public Library. These links proved to be very beneficial.

Best Results of Research

I split my research goals in two:

1. Research to support that other high school newspapers are going online and it is beneficial to start the transition soon

2. Examples of high school newspapers that have already gone online to aid my students and I in designing the website

Research to support moving online

The first article I found to be amusing was actually found as a link to a lesson plan on highschooljournalism.org. This link brought me to the article “Key News Audiences Now Blend Online and Traditional Sources: Audience Segments in a Changing News Environment.” (http://people-press.org/report/444/news-media). This article revealed the results of a 2008 Pew study. Possibly the most interesting result in this article was that “Since 2006, the proportion of Americans who say they get news online at least three days a week has increased from 31% to 37%. About as many people now say they go online for news regularly (at least three days a week) as say they regularly watch cable news (39%); substantially more people regularly get news online than regularly watch one of the nightly network news broadcasts (37% vs. 29%).” In this article, there is also a graph that readership of newspaper, radio, and tv news has steadily decreased while the readership of online news has steadily increased. In 2008, a larger percentage of people got their news online for three or more days a week than read a newspaper. I can imagine the number of people who read their news online will continue to increase as the technologically savvy youth of today get older.

Because of the increase in online readership, it is important that the high school newspapers go online. This will not only help to retain readership, but will also prepare for the future of online publications.

In addition, there were several articles that had information about the flood of high school newspapers that were going online, including “High School Journalism Going Online.” This article, published in 2009, stated that “In the past 12 to 18 months, the number of schools using ASNE's content-management system doubled to 3,000.” The biggest factors attributed to causing the change to publishing online were budget and the change in the industry as a whole. As stated earlier, this was a comment commonly found in several articles I encountered.

After having read these two articles and several others, I feel fully confident that the conversion is the appropriate thing to do as of now.

Research of examples of high school newspapers online already

While struggling in my research for quality articles, Sue pointed me in the direction of highschooljournalism.org. Once arriving at the page, I searched “online newspaper” on the site and instantly found article after article about other high schools converting to online newspapers for budget reasons as well as readership issues. Instead of listing numerous articles about individual newspapers going online, I will instead just include this link that you can click which lists all of the articles about high school newspapers going online.

I found a few examples of high school newspapers that have already gone online. Some of them were some I would like to model the Drifter after, while some were not well designed. Instead of pointing out those that I would consider examples of what not to do, I will highlight a couple that I really liked, which include Newton West High School’s Lion’s Roar , Grand Junction’s “Orange and Black,” and Carmel High School’s HiLite Online.

Some of the elements all of these papers had in common, which I would like to implement on the Drifter site, include:

Podcasts

Vodcasts

Blogs

Polls

Multiple pages that are easy to navigate

Access to Back Issues

The ability to create dominance in story postings

Easy to read/good graphic design

Calendar

In this research, I also found there were several services I could use to construct this website, with the best being School Newspapers Online. This site was too expensive though, so I am going to start out with the free/cheap Weebly and then hopefully progress from there.

As a side note, I also found some lesson plans for getting my students excited for publishing online, since some have reservations. I also found that many newspapers are producing both an online and print publication. Most only print a couple issues a year and are special newspapers for events such as spring break, prom, the senior issue, etc. This might be an effective way for me to transition next year into publishing online, since students will get experience publishing online but will still be able to have some of their work published in print.

Internet Research for Techquest

katielorey@hotmail.com (Katherine Lorey) — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 16:33:00 -0700

The Process of Researching

Best Results of Research

I split my research goals in two:

1. Research to support that other high school newspapers are going online and it is beneficial to start the transition soon

2. Examples of high school newspapers that have already gone online to aid my students and I in designing the website

Research to support moving online

After having read these two articles and several others, I feel fully confident that the conversion is the appropriate thing to do as of now.

Research of examples of high school newspapers online already

Some of the elements all of these papers had in common, which I would like to implement on the Drifter site, include:

Podcasts

Vodcasts

Blogs

Polls

Multiple pages that are easy to navigate

Access to Back Issues

The ability to create dominance in story postings

Easy to read/good graphic design

Calendar

In short, through this research, I have learned that I will be implementing the online newspaper in baby steps (this seemed to be the way most newspapers were converting). I also learned ways to get students excited about publishing online, and I learned about the main elements online high school newspapers are using so I can implement them in our school newspaper as well.

TechQuest Proposal

katielorey@hotmail.com (Katherine Lorey) — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 17:44:00 -0700

The educational need or opportunity:

For my project, I plan to incorporate an online newspaper. I will have taught the class for four years, and the publication has always been print. Because of the cost of printing, my principal has asked that I go online with the newspaper. Not only is this needed because of funding, but it is also essential to the journalism program if it is going to adequately prepare students to seek journalism as a career. Most newspapers are converting to sharing news online rather than in print. Print publications are becoming “dead” while online publications are becoming the norm. Most of my students who have gone on to pursue journalism are now publishing online and are learning a variety of things they must know for online publications in order to succeed in the profession once they earn their degrees. This emphasizes the importance of making sure students in high school are prepared when moving on to higher education and into the workforce. If they are to succeed, my students must be taught a variety of things including but not limited to:

· how to write for an online publication vs. a print publication

· how to create appropriate podcasts and vodcasts

· the appropriate ethical and legal issues associated with online publications

· how to post to an online publication

· methods of design online

· how to use a variety of mediums of technology

Use of Technology to meet the educational need and opportunity:

There are several services that are offered to teachers of publications. As far as funding goes, they vary in pricing. The sites that are designed specifically for online publications are usually really well designed, but cost about $400 to set up and $200 to maintain every year. This will be too expensive for our paper, so I am going to opt for a free website, Weebly. This service will allow me to first create a free site, with the option to pay about $58 a year to incorporate audio and video and to increase storage space. $58 will not be too expensive, and we can easily fundraise or sell ads in order to pay for the site. Because my principal asked that I convert to an online publication due to funding, it is important that I stick with a service that is relatively inexpensive, but is also user-friendly and will be easy for students to upload to. Weebly will offer us these qualities.

Research

In my research, I surprisingly could not find much about the benefits of online newspapers in the secondary classroom. I did see several sites that mentioned they offer students more opportunity to create videos, podcasts, and blogs, and to publish for a wider audience, but not much more was offered. I did check out a few high school newspaper websites to see how they set theirs up. I emailed a few advisers a week ago to see which programs they used, but none of them have responded yet. A few of the newspapers I looked at include the following:

Channel One News- Student Newspapers Online

HiLite Online

I also looked at the following sites in my search for programs and services I may use instead of Weebly:

Online School Newspapers

School Newspapers, School Web Site Publishing & Student Newspaper Templates

Plan for Implementation

During this course, I will implement the free website to my class. Since some of my students will be returning next year, I will show them how to upload articles and images, and how to design the site. Students will be able to practice by publishing their current articles to the site. This will give them the necessary experience of building the webpage prior to incorporating more advanced programs. I plan to have students actually help me design the site so that they have ownership over the site and are excited to use it next year. After the site is complete, students will work with Audacity and with the video camera (if I can borrow one from the film production teacher). They will begin using the technologies so that they can get used to their functions. Next year, I plan to teach students how to appropriately write for and create podcasts and vodcasts. Once the site is up and running and students are prepared to take the next step, I will spend the $58 to incorporate vodcast and podcast.

Four common places of education:

This project addresses the following four common places of education in the following ways:

Someone teaching: This site will help me teach to the journalism standards of higher education and the workforce in a user-friendly way.
Someone learning: The students will learn the cutting edge technology that they will need to know in order to succeed in a career in journalism. If they do not plan to pursue a career in journalism, they will still be learning essential tools of technology (website construction; writing and publishing for a large, online audience; blogging; podcasts and vodcasts; ethical and legal issues in online publishing, etc.)
Some subject matter: Both beginning and advanced journalism
In some setting: In the journalism classroom, in a brick and mortar high school.

Response to “Web 2.0 Meets Information Literacy: Make New Friends and Keep the Old”

katielorey@hotmail.com (Katherine Lorey) — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 19:17:00 -0700

Joyce Kasman Valenza brings up some very critical points in her article “Web 2.0 Meets Information Literacy: Make new friends and keep the old.” Valenza starts by arguing that it is important for students to learn how to use credible, great sources with the best information so that they will be prepared for college and the business world. She states “I have heard celebrated information specialists and futurists proclaim that we live in a good enough / why bother world. If people can easily find some information, they will not be motivated to find better or best information. As a teacher and as a librarian I find this approach impossible to accept.”

I agree witih Valenza here in that teachers must teach students how to find the best information for their research. For the last paper in my composition class, I had many students who turned in websites such as Wikipedia and about.com as their “credible” and “great” research. I would like to blame it on their ignorance, but they had just been through four straight days of instruction/activities that focused on how to use databases appropriately and how to evaluate websites correctly. Those students who chose to turn in sources that were not on the databases complained when I gave them zeroes, claiming that they should be able to use the sources, even though most of the sites didn’t give them very good information and even some false information. One student said to me, “so what? It will work. How is anyone going to know whether or not it is true or false? If you just ignore it, no one will know.” Even after I explained to him that it was immoral and that it was wrong to pass off work that is biased or inaccurate as truth, he seemed to be adamant about using those sources. He and a few other kids mentioned that other teachers don’t make them use those sources, so why do I have to make them use the sources? Again, I sat down and explained the ethical issues involved, and again, they seemed to not care because they wanted the easiest and quickest information they could find.

So my question is, how do you truly motivate students to use credible sources? Grades can be a factor, but how can you get them to truly understand the ethical issues involved in writing research papers and have them consistently follow these ethical standards? I think the answer is to have them publish their work using a Web 2.0 technology. Students will then need to make sure they follow ethical standards because it will be published work and they will see the immediate importance of it much more clearly. As a journalism teacher, I have to sometimes reiterate to students the importance of crediting sources, using copyright free images, crediting photographs and other works. Because the paper will be read by the public, they hold themselves to a higher standard. I am curious as to how the English students will respond to this. I think I will try it sometime soon…

TechQuest Part C, Addressing the four common places of education

katielorey@hotmail.com (Katherine Lorey) — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 19:37:00 -0700

This project will address the four common places of education (teacher, learner, subject matter, and a place of learning) in the following ways:

I will not only be teaching the students about the service and how to upload their articles, etc., but I will still continue teaching the fundamentals of journalism. In addition, I will be teaching them not only how to write for the news, but also how to create podcasts and vodcasts appropriately. This will help the students in their future, especially if they are pursuing a career in journalism. Students will also be taught about copyright rules in regards to the Internet, as well as ethical and legal use of websites. They will learn what they can and cannot publish. They will also learn from each other if they use blogs. They will use the media center and my classroom as the setting for constructing this website, but my editors will most likely have access to it at home as well, so they can update from home, even if they are absent.

TechQuest, Part B- Services I may use

katielorey@hotmail.com (Katherine Lorey) — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 19:17:00 -0700

So, after having researched some of the services and programs offered to create the website for the student newspaper, I have come to the conclusion that I do not want to create the website using Dreamweaver anymore. There are many services available to help educators and students publish their stories online. One of these is free, while the majority you have to pay a minimal fee for.

Here is what I found:

my.hsj.org is a free service for educators. The design is not as impressive as the services we could use for a fee, and it doesn't look like students would have as much freedom to express themselves by using this service, as all of the newspapers that use this service are formatted similarly. There is the benefit, however, that the service is free and looks fairly easy to use. Our school is on a budget freeze, so I'm not sure the school will be up for paying 400 dollars as a start-up fee for the other service I would really like to use. Perhaps I will be able to fundraise.

Although there were quite a few commercial services available to choose from, the service I found to be most appealing can be found at School Newspapers Online. There are a couple of designs that I find to be easy to navigate and have the capability of vodcasting, podcasting, and posting several stories, including the Post and the Tribune designs. The Post is the nicest, but it will cost $600 to use and the Tribune is only $400 to start up. If there is anyone reading this blog who knows of a nicely designed service that is either free or cheaper than these, please let me know! I plan to pitch the idea of the Tribune to my principal sometime this week to see if we can use it.

During this course, I will most likely not be able to implement the website in its entirety. I think I will get the students used to the site by having them post back issues of the paper when they are finished writing for the paper this year. I will also be discussing vodcasting and podcasting with them as the year progresses. This is a huge transition for both me and the students though, so they will most likely not post any vodcasts or podcasts yet. I will also probably have to start out using a free site and then switch to another site later in the semester or next year, when the commercial site is approved for use. The reason I think I should wait to start up the online account is that it costs $200 per year to continue running. This is definitely not a huge cost, but it doesn't make much sense in starting it at the end of the year, when it can be paid for next year instead. After all, our district is on a budget freeze.

My TechQuest, Part A

katielorey@hotmail.com (Katherine Lorey) — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 16:38:00 -0700

For CEP 812, I am required to complete a TechQuest as one of the major assignments. I was excited to learn this, as I already had a great idea in mind for a project of this kind. I plan to create a website for my journalism class, as the traditional print publication will be going online next year to cut costs.

Not only is this something I will be required to do at my school, but it really is an educational opportunity. My principal approached me at the beginning of the year and asked that I take the student publication online. I had already been thinking about this, and was hoping my CEP classes would allow me the opportunity to create or learn how to create a website for the class. Although transitioning to an online publication can be chaotic and difficult, the benefits outweigh these negatives, and I plan to adapt.

There are many benefits that will come from transitioning from the traditional print publication to an online publication. My students will be able to post their articles so that they are read by not only the school, but people in the world, expanding their audience. They will also learn how to vodcast and podcast, technologies that will be important for them in their future, no matter what career path they take. We will also be able to include videos from our video production course, offering them an audience other than the students in the school as well. I plan to incorporate a blog in the website so that other students, teachers, and parents can respond to articles and create online discussions, further opening up the exchange of ideas and enhancing students' critical thinking processes. In addition, by switching to an online course, the district will save at least $1000 that usually goes toward printing costs each year.

I plan to use the website creation software Dreamweaver. Our school's business teachers use this in their classes, so I should have access to the program. I also have six computers in the room that students will be able to use to upload their articles, photos, videos, and podcasts. This will not add any additional costs. We will most likely be able to use Audacity for the podcasts and the video production cameras for the vodcasts, thereby also eliminating costs we would otherwise have.

NoodleBib Express and E-Portfolios

katielorey@hotmail.com (Katherine Lorey) — Mon, 8 Mar 2010 15:36:00 -0800

I had a difficult time choosing just one technology to talk about, so I chose two instead. One of them was a resource for online research, while the other was the concept of using electronic portfolios in the classroom.

Traditionally, I have allowed my students to use KnightCite after they have the basic understanding of how to structure their Works Cited pages. Students find this to be helpful, but still come to me with many questions, wondering what type of source they have, what the database is, etc. After looking at NoodleBib Express, I think I might try using it in my classroom. The neat thing about this site is that it asks the user questions in order to complete the citation. If a student is unsure if his/her source is the one they are documenting, there is a place the user can scroll to get examples of sources that would fall under that category. My students are starting a research project in a month, and I think I will try this site out with them.

As for portfolios, I can see many benefits to using them in the classroom. The seniors in our high school used to complete portfolios of their own their senior year. In these portfolios, they would showcase their best work throughout high school. They would also select a piece of writing from each grade level and write a reflection on their growth as writers. We cut this out about three or four years ago because it took hours for the teacher to organize and file away the papers every student finished throughout the year. It was also difficult for the senior English teachers to cart home several portfolios to grade at the end of a school year. Electronic portfolios would be the perfect alternative to this assignment though. Students could save their papers throughout their high school career on the electronic portfolio. We already use turnitin.com to check for plagiarism. We could just have them take one more step and turn it into their e-portfolios. Once they reach senior year, their papers will be easily accessible. They will also be able to access their papers from home and from any other location, should they move. In addition, students will take ownership of their work, since others could potentially see it, and they will technically be working on their senior project all throughout high school. They will realize that their papers will not only be read once by a teacher, but could be read by other teachers, students, parents, colleges, future employers, etc.

In addition, I require that my students put together a portfolio at the end of each semester. They are to include a copy of every article, layout, picture, or job they accomplish and then write a reflection about each, highlighting what they did well, what they had fun doing, and what they could have improved upon if they had another chance. I find that I learn a lot in this reflection, and they learn a lot too. Often my students complain though that they must waste so many paper printing out their articles, layouts, etc., when they are all on the computer. I always tell them that the portfolios will come in handy later, because they will always have copies of their work and reflections of their work, but I have to admit I agree with the portfolios being a waste of paper, especially since most say they will probably lose them in a half year or throw them away. Using an e-portfolio would not only be less time consuming because students could continue working on it throughout the semester with easy clicks of buttons, but they will also serve as a saving space for their work. If students do a nice job on their e-portfolios, they will be able to share them with future employers, schools, friends, people in other professional settings, etc.

I think the conversion to online portfolios will be a little tricky at first, but not as tricky as one may think. Students are pretty talented at using technology, and they will most likely catch on quickly and with excitement to e-portfolios. I think they will view them as worthwhile projects.

Google Program

katielorey@hotmail.com (Katherine Lorey) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 16:34:00 -0800

For the google program review, I chose to look at Google’s Picassa, a photo editing program. This program is a simplified, free version of PhotoShop. It obviously is free, so this helps cut costs for schools if they have traditionally used PhotoShop, which is a good thing considering the predicament the state is in now.

Because Picassa is simplified, it has both its benefits and its drawbacks in the classroom. One of the benefits is that it is pretty easy to use. Students can easily upload and share photos over a blog or email using a little tool bar at the bottom of the window. They can also easily apply basic changes to an image. These basic settings include cropping and color adjustment, which is exactly what we usually use in journalism, so I think this could be beneficial for my students. It is unethical for students to change much else in their photos for the newspaper. Another benefit is that time it will take a teacher to learn and teach students how to use the program. It doesn’t look like it would take long to show students how to use it, and there aren’t as many adjustment options for them as in PhotoShop, so it would be easier. Because there aren’t as many options though, students aren’t able to create art using Picassa, like they can in PhotoShop. My sidebar editor would be pretty disappointed if we got rid of PhotoShop and used Picassa instead.

If a teacher wants students to be creative when using photos, they most likely will prefer PhotoShop to Picassa because of some of the advanced features PhotoShop offers. For example, if a teacher is having students create digital stories and wants the stories to be accurate, without many manual changes made to the image, Picassa may be the easy route to go. If the teacher wants students to manipulate the photo though, Picassa will probably not be the best program for them.

As for organization and sharing, Picassa does have some pretty cool features. It allows people to be tagged in photos, so it will be easy for students (which is especially good in journalism) to find photos of certain individuals. They can also apply places to the photos and even place the photos on Google Earth, which could serve a teacher well depending on the assignment. As I also mentioned before, there are easy click buttons that allows the user to send photos via email or upload them to a blog.

Using Web 2.0 technologies in the classroom

katielorey@hotmail.com (Katherine Lorey) — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:53:00 -0800

I have decided to list the questions that have been posed in my master's class and include my answers after them:

What instructional strategies would fit well with using blogs in the classroom? Why?

The project-based approach and the inductive strategies would work well while using blogs in the classroom. If students are given a project they must complete, they could blog with one another to share ideas and design their projects.

Using the inductive approach, a teacher could give the student a concept and the students could then generate their own thoughts and ideas using a blog and blogging with others, thereby creating a learning community.

The “guide on the side” approach probably works best here, since the students are able to construct their own meaning by collaborating with others and sharing their ideas with not only their classmates, but the public.

What instructional strategies would not fit well with using blogs in the classroom? Why?

The deductive approach would not work well with blogging. If a teacher lectures and is known as the “expert,” then students won’t have much to explore while blogging. They will most likely just regurgitate the information the teacher told the student in order to make the teacher happy and fulfill the assignment. This does not encourage the student to collaborate or exchange ideas with others, since the teacher knows best.

How could you see Blogs being used in your classroom with your subject matter?

In the journalism classroom, I could see them being used as a way for students to respond to current events that they watch or read. They could also share ideas about topics to be covered in upcoming issues of the newspaper.

For English, blogs could be used in a variety of ways, depending on the unit students are studying. I often have class discussions, but it seems that the same students like to dominate the discussions, whereas some students like to take a backseat. These same students who take a backseat seem to share more in their writing. I don’t want to lose the discussion aspect in the classroom because I think it is important that students gain comfort in sharing ideas vocally, but I do think this would offer those more reserved kids the chance to have their voices “heard” by other students as well as the public. I also have my students journal a lot in class, so I suppose blogging could also be used as an online journal of sorts. I like to have conversations via journals, and this would be a much faster way for me to converse with students.

Bonus Question: Sometimes it is not the technology that imposes the limitations but our own imaginations and ability to adapt technology to fit our needs-- How could you adapt a Web 2.0 technology to support an instructional strategy that you feel it doesn't easily support? (e.g., using a blog to help students understand their math facts.)

Hmmm…probably the aspect of English that Web 2.0 technologies would support the least is vocabulary. It is pretty difficult to think of something I could do with vocabulary words besides quizzes that are provided online. One of the things my students struggle with is using new words in sentences in the correct way. I could have students create wikis, writing their own sentences using words and then editing the sentences of others if they do not make sense the way they are written. I don’t think this is a great idea, but it was the only thing that came to mind. I guess that my imagination is limiting me right now!

My wikispace

katielorey@hotmail.com (Katherine Lorey) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 19:16:00 -0800

Here is the link to my wikispace: http://lakeshoreclasscouncil2011.wikispaces.com/

We hired a new choir teacher this year, Katie Rohwer. The choir director prior to this was Adam Wurst, and there was another choir director two years before him. I couldn't figure out how to put a screen shot on my blog, so I will post it to the msu site instead. :)

wiki spaces

katielorey@hotmail.com (Katherine Lorey) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 18:50:00 -0800

My first year, some of my charming students (who wanted As) told me, "Hey Ms. Lorey, look what the definition for 'Athena' is on this site! When I walked over, my name appeared on the screen. As flattered as I was to receive the title "goddess of wisdom," I knew it was some sort of trick. My students were trying to get As and were flattering me...but how were they doing it? After I sat staring in confusion for some time, my students finally decided to enlighten me about wikis. This was my first experience with wikipedia.

Since that day, I have learned a little about wikipedia, however, I did not build my own wiki until tonight. The wiki I decided to build was one for my class council. We are in charge of planning prom this year and have mock rock, winterfest, and other activities at the same time. My students are supposed to meet every Thursday morning, and my principal graciously allowed our students to meet for a half day last month, but we are still having difficulty communicating with one another all of the time. I am excited to share my wiki with my students and co-advisor tomorrow, because I think it will be a highly affective way to communicate and get some things done for prom!

After having read the article and watched the tutorials over wiki's, I have come to realize that they could definitely be used for educational purposes other than organization. I think I will try having students work on a wiki in collaboration with a couple other students to develop a review guide for the Odyssey this unit. I also think this will be a great way for my journalism students to communicate when we have snow days or when we are not in class. Email is outdated and half my students don't check their emails on a regular basis. Texting proves to be easier for them because they can directly communicate with one another and get immediate feedback. The wikispace will allow students to communicate with one another as well. In combination with flickr, RSS feeds, and social networking sites, the process of acquiring materials for the newspaper has become much easier!

computer-based learning- things to ponder

katielorey@hotmail.com (Katherine Lorey) — Tue, 2 Feb 2010 18:48:00 -0800

When creating computer-based instructional objects such as WebQuests and StAIRs, it is important for educators to consider multiple things, including the type of learning they want their students to be conducting, abilities of students, and the technology students have access to.

To begin with, teachers should think about the strategies they would like to employ when designing and/or using computer-based activities. After having looked at a few WebQuests, I have found that those centering around project- or problem-based methods seem to have the most value. There are WebQuests that simply ask students to visit sites, record the information they learn from the sites, and then apply this information to tasks. This deductive approach to learning works well if you are purely using the WebQuest as a medium through which to deliver information. However, it does not require students to do much more than what they could have done without a computer. If a teacher wishes for students to construct their own understanding, I feel it is imperative that things such as StAIRs and WebQuests be centered around ideas students construct and/or problems that students must develop their own answers to based on learning. For example, one WebQuest I visited, To Choose Freedom: A WebQuest http://www.lausd.k12.ca.us/Emerson_MS/levin_wq/, asks students to answer the question “If you had been a slave, would you have tried to reach freedom using the Underground Railroad?” Students are then asked to visit sites to learn about slavery, Harriet Tubman, and the Underground Railroad. They then formulate their response to the question from the research they have done and write a paper supporting their decision. This WebQuest asks students to learn by reading; however, they are also asked to analyze the information in a team and construct their own opinions based on the information they have learned. This uses both the constructivist and the problem-based approach to teaching and provides students with the opportunity to develop their own understanding because the teacher is acting as the “guide on the side,” coaching them, while they are held accountable for their own learning.

Another factor educators must consider when developing or using computer-based activities is the abilities of the students. In a co-taught special education classroom, the teacher will most likely need to keep in mind that some students will finish before others will and it may take some students with learning disabilities a longer amount of time to complete an exercise where they must extract information from a variety of sources on the Internet and come up with their own solutions. At the same time though, teachers can easily adapt the requirements for students based on their individual needs.

Yet another thing educators must consider when using computer-based instructional objects is whether or not students have access to computers. I know that the laptop carts are limited and difficult to get at our school and normally are booked up to a month or two months in advance. This makes it difficult to implement computer-based activities. If students are asked to do a WebQuest at home because of the lack of technology in schools, a teacher must consider whether or not this student has a computer and/or the Internet or whether or not the student can access it through a local library or come after school to complete the assignment.

Two WebQuests I saw that I would consider using in my classroom include the one previously mentioned: To Choose Freedom: A WebQuest http://www.lausd.k12.ca.us/Emerson_MS/levin_wq/ and World War II: In Defense of Freedom http://www.lifestreamcenter.net/DrB/Lessons/WW2/index.htm. The first one I would use in the freshman nonfiction unit, where students read part of a slave narrative. The other, about World War II, I could use with my freshmen before they read Night, by Elie Wiesel, which is about one boy’s experience in a concentration camp. This could be used to introduce the Holocaust and World War II prior to reading.

The difference between blogs and posts

katielorey@hotmail.com (Katherine Lorey) — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 16:45:00 -0800

Websites and blogs are both accessible through the internet, but there are many differences between the two. One of the main differences is that a blog can serve as an open forum where people can share ideas and have online conversations. This is not the norm for websites. Websites are generally places people can go for information. Blogs allow the author to communicate with his/her followers who may live as close as next door or millions of miles away.

Introduction!

katielorey@hotmail.com (Katherine Lorey) — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 16:07:00 -0800

Hey everyone,
My name is Katie and I am new to the blogging world! I am a high school English and journalism teacher in Michigan and am currently working towards my master's in educational technology, which brings me here.

Here is a little background information about me so that we can get acquainted. My roots are in Muskegon, where my parents and my sister's family reside. They mean the world to me, and I am appreciative that we were all able to find jobs in Michigan so we can see each other often. Every single person in my immediate family is a teacher, including my brother-in-law. Needless to say, dinnertime conversations are interesting. :)

My passion in life is traveling and I am always up for adventures to new places as long as my budget will allow me to do so! When I'm not traveling, I am spending time with family and friends, reading, watching TV shows and movies, correcting papers, or working on my own class work.

I look forward to posting more comments as the class continues, and I look forward to reading your postings too!