. It's About Learning

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Human Services

After participating in the e-learning grant I have changed many aspects of my program as well as assignments. Two of the improvements that I have made that have made my life so much easier is getting my students access to email through the school and increasing the use of Google Docs.
Email has allowed students to send me assignments anytime from anywhere cutting down on missing or late assignments. It gives me the opportunity to provide feedback immediately and more importantly it allows me to send reminders about missing or late assignments. This is extremely useful while I am working on grades I can email the student a list of missing work; I don't have to try to remember the following day to tell them not to mention the information is in their inbox and not stuffed into a binder or lost and they can refer back to it as needed.
Google Docs allows us to work collaboratively on projects, students can shared drafts with me and I can respond on the document right along with them. They can access their work from anywhere no more "it's not on this computer" or "I forgot my zip drive."
We have used many new tools to enhance our learning such as Photostory, Picasa, Storybird, Prezi, Google Presentation, Picnik, Blogger, and Glogster. The students have greatly enjoyed using these. I definitely feel this increased the engagement of the students. Below are two Glogs created by one of my juniors.Physical Health and SIDS

Diversified Agriculture's Video production

     This year my agriculture class made its first round of videos. We have slaughtered and processed different livestock in the past but the only technology we used was a digital camera. The addition of video to the process was amazing.
     There are several reasons that i find video to be a highly successful educational tool. The first is that it got the class really engaged.  It allowed students who were not involved in each step to participate, while encouraging students who were involved to see the importance of doing each step to the best of their ability. It also placed more value on the process because they were showing the rest of the world their skills. When it came time to edit the video the students had to reflect on what they thought was an important step to show and how much time should be dedicated to each step.  Editing lasted a while and involved a lot more reflection than i would have been able to get out of them if i asked them to write a reflection.
   Another valuable part of this process was that some students excelled at this process and were able to teach other students how to edit the video, download music, edit the music, and compile the whole project.  Every student enjoyed this project, was engaged, and wanted to create the best video possible.
    This increase in engagement, quality of work produced, and reflection has inspired me to use video as a tool in the classroom more frequently. My goal for next year is to create a video for each project we undertake. These videos will be on a blog so that parents and the community can see what we do in class. They will also be instructional so that the students have to internalize what they have learned in order to teach it to the world.   I am extremely excited to start this project in the fall.

Pre Tech English

In our Pre-Tech English class we watched the 1979 movie All Quiet on the Western Front. As part of the reflection piece students were asked to collaborate with another student to create a Photo Story in which they introduced the main characters and summarized the plot. Students were required to use no less than eight and no more than ten slides. They were also asked to identify and comment on a theme from the movie. Another requirement was that students use background sounds, narration, or both. This was the first Photo Story we did in class and it went very well. I used one of the products as part of our presentation at the Dynamic Landscapes conference. In this Photo Story two students used machine gun sounds in the background as a way to recreate the atmosphere of the trenches in WWI as depicted in the movie. One of the students narrated the Photo Story. It was interesting to see how he basically read from the screen for the first few slides but began to move away from the text and more detail in the later slides. This project led to a “This Is Me” Photo Story later on that followed the same basic format. Check out the movie Photo Story below the fold.

https://picasaweb.google.com/ChasWilson.VT/PhotoStory?authkey=Gv1sRgCPiDgayRhtbJWg&feat=embedwebsite#5608126235442083426

Media Reads and Shares Live!

     As I sat between two River Bend teachers, I watched them writing class notes and editing them simultaneously. Without having time to marvel at this demonstration of live publishing, I was told to log on to the same document. It surprised me that I, also, could add live edits while they were writing notes.

     My pleasant surprise was immediately applied the next day to my 7th and 8th grade library classes. I asked for two volunteers in each class to take shared notes. One of my 8th graders already knew how to share a document and coached a second student to volunteer with her. The quality of notes was super. The notes were shared with the class for the rest of the term.

     While my 7th graders did not volunteer, one responded, "How can I do something I haven't learned how to do?" The next class we met I showed her how to share a document and she took over creating notes immediately. I ended up having everyone in the class write a short response to: "Can you learn something yourself without someone showing you how to do it?" The responses were positive, and perhaps illuminating to the students themselves.

     Since then, two more teachers have asked how they can set up shared note taking with their classes.

NO MORE PAPER OR "I DONT HAVE TIME"

My students would enter the classroom, find their daily sheets, fill out their learning objections/goals for the day. Then after class would fill out what they accomplished and what they learned. Hand the sheets into me on a daily basis for a grade. That happens in a perfect world. The sheets get lost or destroyed, but thanks to google docs, students now:

Go to a computer
Log in to their daily sheets in Google (which is shared with me)
Type up the proper information (at anytime)
Look at my comments ( at anytime)

This means no more:

Running out or copying papers on Monday morning
Filing on Friday afternoon
Lost papers
More space for student reflections

Note taking:

Collaborates through Google Doc
The class can view, add, and edit notes
Share with each other
NO MORE LOST NOTES

Prezi

For final review I asked my students to prepare a PowerPoint presentation about the chapter I had assigned. I had just heard about Prezi, so together with another teacher, we asked one student to use Prezi instead of PowerPoint. It was great listening to her as she discovered new parts of the program and created a fun and entertaining presentation. Other students want to try Prezi so I'm sure we will have very interesting presentation in years to come.

Copy of Salon Ecology on Prezi

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Professional Development 6-15-10

6/15/10 Clicker Training
Today Bob gave a presentation to the staff on how to use Clickers. After the demonstration each staff member was asked to create a Clicker Assesment that they would use within their program. All staff presented thier clicker assessments on 6/16/10.

Great Job Everyone!!

Professional Development 6-11-10

On 6/11/10 we had a professional development day with all the staff at RBCTC. I presented a workshop on how to create a blog. The goal of the workshop was for each program to create a platform to display their program. The tasks for the staff were given were as follows:
*Create a Class Blog that includes the following
*program discription
* 2 class pictures
* A gadget
* 2 Links
1 to the RBCTC Calendar
1 to the RBCTC Program Overview
These blogs will be maintained by both the teacher and the students throughtout the year.
The following are the created blogs!
Building Trades
EMS
Culinary Arts
Pretech Math
Diversified Ag
Electrical Technology
Cosmetology
Pretech English

in addition to these two of the staff have begun to create a website that will be used to post the sylabus, scope and sequence, assignments, and other course related material.
Culinary Website
Human Services Website