My assignment links

Here are the assignments that I worked on this term with my group and by myself.

View my essay

View Group Project One:

View Group Project Two:

View Group Project Three:

My course reflection

Kala Jo Grice
IT 648 Class Reflection
What learned

I truly believe this class has taught me more useful things than any of my other graduate classes have. I have learned a lot more about gmail accounts than I had ever known before. This will help me in my classes as well. Since my school allows us to access gmail, I will suggest to my students that they create gmail accounts this year for their required email account. I will try out the blogging in my classroom and see how it goes with the junior high school students. I never knew all the possibilities with blogging either. I always thought it was just like a journal where all you did was write stuff. I never knew it could have attachments and links to other sites within it. I liked getting to choose my layout too. I did not like the chat capabilities in gmail. They ended up being too complicated to figure out. It was not very user friendly which is a must with the age I teach.

I also learned a lot more about the live classroom than I had ever used before. I found it to be VERY beneficial. I plan to use this more in my classroom and try to use my EEF money to buy a webcam for my teacher computer. I think my students will enjoy that more than just being able to hear each other.

I also learned about NVU. I had never used it before. I have created many websites in the past but NVU was a new software program for me. I struggled a lot in the beginning but after going through the tutorial, I understood it a lot more. However, I do not believe I will use this in my classroom since Dreamweaver is a required curriculum objective.

I also learned about a LOT of Web 2.0 software tools. I plan to study these more in depth in the future and try to include some in my classes.


Weak points

My weak points this in this class was making myself blog and respond to other blogs. I have never been a fan of everyone knowing how I truly feel about things, and therefore, this was a tremendously hard assignment for me. I do not have the personality to explain in detail everything I think and do while creating an assignment. I feel it is a tiresome and boring thing. I can see how others could benefit from it though and I do understand its purpose.

I also struggled with NVU. I am so used to more advanced web creation software that it was hard for me to use NVU. I did like some of the sites the tutorial sent us to where we could create our logos and banners and such. That was fun.


Strong points

My strong points were a little unfair to my classmates. Since I teach a brand new, up to date technology class, I have used a lot of the technologies that we used in this classroom. I came in to the assignments already having a huge advantage and this allowed my group to excel rather quickly. I catch on pretty fast to new technologies also. This has always been a plus for me.


Interaction with peers

I LOVED!!!!!! My group. They were WONDERFUL. We all learned from each other and worked at a great pace. Since I hate to procrastinate, we worked well together. Our group got together on line every Tuesday night for about four weeks and got a LOT accomplished. Even after we were done with our group assignments, we would get on and help each other out.

As for the discussion board interaction, I was a little depressed. I was usually the first to post and rarely got responses. I guess a lot of people are like me and only respond to the people who post around the time they do.


Interaction with instructor

I was glad that Dr. Wang posted to my blogs because towards the end, it was a little sad. Only one member would tend to respond. I was grateful that Dr. Wang responded to most of the questions I sent her in emails. There was one time when I blogged, emailed and put in the discussion board an issue I was having and no one responded with how to settle the issue. I eventually called my mom and her and I tried to figure it out. Dr. Wang was great about keeping me up to date on my grade as well. Every time I sent something in to be graded, she got me my grade in a timely manner. She was also helpful in helping me correct my mistakes which is a wonderful learning tool in and of itself. Thanks Dr. Wang!

Communication devices

Of all the communication devices we used in this class, I cannot answer which one I used the most because I used a lot of them a lot of the time. For group work, we used the live classroom because we found it the most beneficial for us. We could see each other, hear each other and not have to type all of our chats. This was what worked best for us. The only disadvantage I saw with it was sometimes the videos would lag and also not everyone can afford all of the equipment needed to be able to get the full advantages of the software, for example, a webcam and a microphone.

In the class, I used the discussion board all the time to post my discussions and my responses to my classmates. It was also used to ask some of the help questions I had. The discussion board was an advantage because the questions posed made us think and reflect before we responded. The only disadvantage was sometimes they would get lengthy because there were so many questions in one discussion. I do not like to open a discussion thread and see it take up the entire page. It makes me not want to read it.

I also blogged after every assignment I completed. I went on daily and responded to any new blogs that my group members had posted also. The blogging had an advantage because it did make me reflect on what I had done. However, this was also a disadvantage for me because again I am private and do not like to discuss these kinds of things in detail where anyone can read them.

Email was used in gmail between my group members to send drafts of our projects to each other. This was an advantage to us because no other group could see it like if we had to use the discussion board. I did not really see any disadvantages of the email.

The chat room was not used more than the one time we tried it as a group. Advantage was you did not need any extra equipment. However, the big disadvantage was it was too hard to follow any of the conversations. I kept getting lost in the discussion.

The voice board was okay. I can see how it would be REALLY useful in a college class because you could send an announcement to the student’s email account and they would not have to log into blackboard to get it. However, it is just not needed in my classroom. My home page is a built in announcement page and the students are required to read the announcement to find their daily assignments. I guess I could use it for any students who have problems reading. I could offer the announcements in two locations. That is a pretty good idea. I might just try to do that.


Helpfulness of group work and why

I enjoyed getting the different perspectives from my group members because it made me think of possible benefits and problems that the technology might cause my own students. My group worked wonderfully together and I got a lot from them because of this. You cannot evaluate communication devices without someone to communicate with and having the same group for all of the evaluations was helpful because you already knew their technological history.

Suggestions

The only suggestion I would make is to maybe split the discussion questions and try to not have so much to type in one response. It makes it hard to make yourself log on and read all of that so you can respond to others.

Report

Okay so that was sooo a flash back to freshman year in high school. I worked on a report in high school for the technology club about the history of the internet. It was titled, ARPANet Archie. When I was writing this report, my introduction was giving the history of Electronic mail and I ran accross information about ARPANet. I even called up my partner on that project and talked to him for a while. It was so cool.

Back to the report. I sat at my desk everyday for about two weeks now trying to start this paper and not EVEN knowing where to begin. I finally went back through all my email messages in Blackboard (Ironic right :) ) and read the one where I had sent my outline. Once I read this, the ideas just began to flow. I sat at the computer and started to type. However, frustration set in because with every sentence I was having to go back to the USM library and find documentation to back it up. Once I finally got my introduction written, I had all the documentation I needed for the rest of the report and I started typing away. I got through with the fourth page and went to bed. After Chruch today, I came back to the computer, reread what I had wrote and the words started flowing again. I got done and decided to go mow the yard with an electric mower and it is twelve acres. Needless to say, I got bored and came back in and reread my paper again.

I reflected a lot with this paper on how I use Email and didnt even realize it. I also reflected on some of the disadvantages that I do not even think about anymore because I have been using it since 1996 when we got the internet at my house. I did not learn anything from this report but it was a great reflection. I guess you could say it made me take notes over what I want to emphasis this year with my students when we begin discussing emails.

Working on Report

I have been working on my research report. It took me a while to decide what my topic would be because I wanted to make sure there was enough information out there. Therefore, I started at the USM library. I searched as many topics as I could think of and finally decided I would research Email and Computer Conferencing in the classroom. When I sent my topic and a VERY brief outline to Dr Wang, she suggested I just research Email Usage in the Classroom. I agreed but skeptically.

This week and the end of last week, I have been researching for my ten references. I have had to sift through THOUSANDS of articles that I have found. Only a handful of them are relevant to my topic however.

Now I'm ready to begin writing. But!!!!! I'm confused!!! I know how to write a research paper but that is not what Dr. Wang wants. A large part of our grade comes from our own creativity and originality. I am not sure of the structure the report should take. I have not been able to write anything because I cannot figure out how it should look. If I had an example to look at, I believe I could get started and finish in one day. That is, if I do not have to work that day. I would start at 8 AM and work until it was done. Probably around 1 or 2 AM. I just need to figure this out so I can focus on my other two classes. Their research work is piling up and this one is lingering over my head.

Website complete

I updated my website with the calendar for the course, added graphics, and checked all links. This was an easy assignment for me because I have made MANY websites in the past few years. NVU was okay to use. I would suggest it for beginner learners but ONLY if they have a tutorial that is well designed. My students would never be able to figure out this software without step by step instructions like Dr. Wang gave us. They struggle with Dreamweaver too. I believe that if you start a student off with building a website from scratch, they will be able to work with any program after that. This is how I learned. I was not given any templates or anything and had to design and build the entire site myself. Once I learned how to do this, using templates just saved time but I rarely use them because I know how to make them more suited for what I want.

I will reflect on this assignment again when I begin teaching web design to my students this coming year and decide if I would like to use this software. Again, I am not sure because my curriculum requires me to teach them Dreamweaver.

My site address is http://kjpics.us/website

I hope you are enjoying my blogs.

Finished Website

Once I followed the tutorial Dr. Wang created. The site sort of created itself. It helps that I have created MANY sites in the past. I began by creating the basics that would be on each page and then saved that as all of the pages. (I had not read this part of the rubric yet :) ) I then, went on to begin creating my heading for each page like the rubric suggested. Once I had the headings, the content was easy because I used the information that I use in my ICT II classes during the regular school year. It was not a hard assignment but I am glad it is over.

There are so many discussion we have to respond to that I am trying to get all of the projects done so I can focus on the discussions. I still have two other classes to focus on too so getting this out of the way was the best choice for me. I will hopefully begin my report this weekend. I would love it if I finished all of this course but the discussions this week so I can focus on the research for my REF 601 class. I also need to focus on my IT Plan for IT 709.

Website

I have begun my website. At first look at NVU, I HATED it!!!!! I prefer Dreamweaver because it has a lot more capabilities.

I then used the tutorial that Dr. Wang provided and it was a lot easier. I feel as though the tutorial created the site for me. There was not a lot of creativity involved. However, when I taught Dreamweaver this year, I did the same thing to my students. They were told the basics of every page and then they were expected to design and create the content, the banners, and the logos.

I have created the basic part of all four pages. I have completed the home page and I lack the content of the other three pages.

Forwarding Voice message

I created the message and then clicked on it to see that the forward option popped up. I tried sending to my google group but it did not go through. I then sent it to my hotmail account where I received it immediately. I then tried to forward to my google group and again, it would not let me. I think this would be great to use to forward messages to students' personal email accounts or even to parents but not good for sending to google groups.

Group Project summary

Well we completed all three group projects before the first one was even due. All we lack is some final touches to make them sound a little better. My group was WONDERFUL. We even had a problem the first night and could not get the gmail chat to allow us to invite more than one person to a single chat. We got it figured out the second week (Go Group :)) We all learned new technology while completing these assignments and learned some things that we would and some things that we would NOT use in our own classes.

We all agreed that Google is NOT user friendly enough to use with our students. It has been good for us though because of the group discussions we can send through the email application.

We all loved the live classroom. Getting to see each other was a neat feature. There are parts of the live classroom that would be too hard for a junior high school class to use. The web cams would get over whelming because all the students would want to play :0) But I would use it to where they could see me if I am absent one day and have time to log on while they are with the sub.

I did not find a synchronous or asynchronous software that I would use in my classroom. I use blackboard already and it has all of these available for me in one location and my students would not have to go to another location and create more usernames and passwords.

Group Projects

My group worked WONDERFULLY together. I LOVED how non of us procrastinated. We all decided a time to log on and we worked through all the projects. We worked for over two hours that night but we got a LOT accomplished. I am so glad I got into the group I did. We also decided to meet next Tuesday to finalize everything. This is so impressive because we will be finalizing projects one through three and project one is not even due yet. This will allow all of us to focus on other assignments and other classes for a little while.

We discussed a lot about the benefits and disadvantages of each of the programs that we were using. I would hate to have to go back and read the entire transcript to figure out what was sad. Each of us decided to take notes on the parts of our discussions that involved our project. Each person volunteered to create the summary of one of the projects. Two of us are working on the last summary. We might each take one of the sections and then work together on the conclusion of the two tied together.

Gmail Chat and Creating a Group

It was REALLY simple to create a group. All I had to know where my group members' gmail email accounts and then I followed the instructions on the screen. I do not believe it took me more than five minutes tops.

As for creating the Gmail Chat, I saw on the left navigation bar a chat tool. I clicked it and then chose my group out of the list.

I can see using this if a teacher has to be absent from Class one day. This would be a great way to talk with the students quickly and make sure they understand the assignment that you left with the sub. They can also ask any questions they might have. As for the Video chat. I hate it. My computer does not have fast internet and everything is blurry and jumpy. I do not EVER plan to use this in my classroom. I could see if everyone had ideal computers though because then you could see the teacher or student's facial expression when they are talking and know when they are being sarcastic or serious. You can also tell when someone is frustrated or angry.

Self Intro

Sorry I did not know this had to be our first blog until after I had submitted my first one.

I am a Junior High School Math and Computer teacher. I also help coach Volleyball (all three teams at our school) and I do photography on the side. I am a full time Grad Student and hope to graduate in December.

I created this blog as a reflection/ journal of my experience in IT 648 during the Summer of 2009. This blog will include reflection on each topic/project that we cover and a final blog on a reflection of the class as a whole. I am really glad we do not have to turn all of this into a Flash document like we did last term. I am not a fan of FLASH :) sorry Dr. Wang.

creating Gmail and Blog

I had to do this for Dr. Wang's class last term so I do not really remember how hard or easy it was. I do not enjoy blogging much. I am not big on people being able to read my reflections. I tend to not put what I really feel in these because I do not want everyone to know.

I am suppose to make my students blog in my classroom also but for the same reason I do not like it, I do not make it mandatory. They know that at the end of the term, they will have to write a reflection and most of my students use their blog to write it as they go but they tend to say what they think I want to hear. I know that it is not their true feelings because I watch them in class and can see that they do not like what we are doing. However, their blogs do not reflect this.