Voki

Voki is a website that enables and allows you to create an animated character to introduce yourself or create a story with. When signing on and creating an account a character is picked and you are allowed to give it hair, accessories, background and different features to create your own styel for your character. This website was a lot of fun, and will find it beneficial and useful in the grade levels of 5-8; could be used with new students and using it as an ice breaker. The website was easy to use which made it very productive and effective; I really enjoyed this assignment!

To check out my Voki:

http://www.voki.com/pickup.php?scid=8391009&height=267&width=200

 

 

Standards:

2.	Communication and Collaboration
	Students use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance, to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others. Students:
	a. interact, collaborate, and publish with peers, experts, or others employing a variety of digital environments and media. 6. Technology Operations and Concepts   Students demonstrate a sound understanding of technology concepts, systems, and operations. Students:   a. understand and use technology systems.

 

Google Sites

                 I have never created a webpage or published a site regarding myself or my classroom. I really enjoyed looking through all the templates because they had so many pertaining to different areas. Being a soccer coach, as well as a daycare director, I saw other templates that would fit perfectly into that category and maybe grow my business once getting that webpage up and going. I did find it difficult at first to find a template that would suit my style within the teaching field, and since I did not know how to manage the site at first, I think I made three different one's until I saw how to change and manage the site.

I found this assignment to be extremely fun because you are able to make the page about you, and people get your sense of style. I have a lot to do on my page, but I have started it and it will be upgraded within the months to come. To check out my webpage, click on this site: https://sites.google.com/site/adipietro18181818/


Standards:

 

1b: Model appropriate strategies essential to continued growth and development of the understanding of technology operations and concepts.

 
2d: Plan for the management of technology resources within the context of learning activities.

Word Cloud

A word cloud is a list of words describing a topic, the topic can be anything you imagine it to look like. In my case, I chose an educator, and focused all different words that describe an educator. If an educator in my opinion does not matach up to the words I have listed, then I do not vouch or see that individual as an educator. Also, I made my word cloud bright and vibrant to show that to be an educator you have to have a bright, entergetic personality in order to work with any grade level of students.

Again, the word cloud can pertain to anything, you are able to use as many words as you would like, frame the words in a specific order and then choose a font and color for your group of words. This website could be used within an English classroom to have students make a list of adjectives describing themselves, and to go as far as having the students bring in pictures to show the word come to life. It was a very simple activity but brings a lot of meaning behind it.

Here is the link to view my word cloud in the gallery:

http://www.wordle.net/gallery

 

 

Standards:

 

p3c: romote and model effective communication and collaboration among stakeholders using digital-age tools

5c: promote and model responsible social interactions related to the use of technology and information

Excel 2

Within this activity, we are taking a research question and depicting to see the result. The research questions states: Does student's gender impact 4th grade math performance?

The independent variables were the genders: Males and Females. The dependent variable is the website in which I received the information off of: NAEP 2011 4th Grade state reading averages. Now that the information is in place and we know what we are looking for we create a hypothesis, which is basically an educated guess. After already looking at the states and seeing the vast difference in the states, I was not sure if it would really matter about the gender since I did not take a huge look at that side of the graph. When thinking and review, I came to the conclusion, I did not feel that gender would make a difference in the students performance.

Below is my t- test in which I compared the two samples given to me; males and females in result to their performance of the reading averages.

 

Based on the conclusion, I failed to reject the null hypothesis of one gender performing better than the other because their was no significant difference.

Within my own teaching, I could do a Health lesson on finding if more females atheletes are prone to get hurt over male atheletes; students could focus on a certain state on nationwide.

Excel 1

This assignment was actually interesting to view, but I had a series of frustrating events happen during this assignment; my computer decided to crash during this event causing me to redo all the work on the library computer, and since I cannot download any applications, I was refrained to using Paint instead of Jing when posting where the states our within our graph. Other then my mistrials within my day, this assignment was easy to follow due to the videos provided and since I have lived in both WV and MD, it was fun to look at the differences.


                                                                       Descriptive Statistics:

When comparing the states, I noticed that West Virginia was very low within the reading level of the 4th grade students of all the states, it was located to be the 41st state, and Maryland was extremely high rannked at third, right behind Massachusetts and New Jersey. With the ranking being listed West Virginia is below average and Maryland is above average.

                                                                

 

 

 

Scatter Plot Graph- Again, I used paint to locate both West Virignia and Maryland on my graph due to my difficulties with my computer. The graph is able to give you a visual representation of where both states are at within the reading content compared to every state in our country.

 

 

Standards:

 

1a: assist teachers in the ongoing development of knowledge, skills, and understanding of technology systems, resources, and services that are aligned with district and state technology plans.

 

2 a: consult with teachers as they design methods and strategies for teaching computer/technology concepts and skills within the context of classroom learning.

5a: model advanced features of word processing, desktop publishing, graphics programs, and utilities to develop professional products.

Rubric

Rubistar is a site that allows you to create any rubric based on what you are teaching. A rubric is simply a grading scale, whatever the project may be which is my case was a Persuasive Essay, so what I did was take the elements that I am looking for and grade accordingly. With the persuasive essay I am looking for an attention grabber or quality introduction paragraph, thesis statement, supporting details on whether they are for or against the topic given, closing paragraph, spelling/ punctuation, sentence structure and grammar. Now that I have all the elements that I will be looking for in their essays, I create a scale of 5 being the highest and 1 being the lowest and write what the students need to do in order to obtain a 5. Rubrics are a guide for students to see what they need to do to receive a high score as well as what will give them a low score.

Rubrics should be given to the student prior to the assignment so they have a guideline and something that clearly states what the teacher is looking for; this is a great tool for grading and I have used rubrics may of times for papers, PowerPoint projects as well as collaborative projects.

You can view my rubric here: http://goo.gl/Q6vZg

Google Earth

Above is my Google Earth picture including the ten landmarks that I would take my students on when visiting D.C. I have used Google Earth before in other classes as well as in a class when teaching Introduction to Computers. Google Earth is different from Google Maps because it shows a visual image with graphic details and almost making you feel like you are in that location at that given time. As you can tell at the bottom of my screen shot how great the visual images are of each landmark and when clicking on a specific location it will bring you to that landmark, showing you the streets and surroundings to give you a better picture of what it looks like.

The KML File stands for "Keyhole Markup Language," it allows you to take a map created through Google Map and insert it into Google Earth providing a clearer aspect of the geographic data entered. The KML File will allow you to plot multiple points of interest, draw lines and mark regions within the file to transfer, allowing you to share places and information of other applications and exchange it to another.

Scavenger Hunt of Capital Cities!

When reviewing the Google Earth for Educators Website, I did come across some really great ideas of how to incorporate Google Earth successfully into the classroom. One that really caught my eye was the scavenger hunt, what student does not love a scavenger hunt?? The reason I chose this one particularly is because not ever really being attracted to history class, this would catch my interest and foresee it catching other students interest as well. It allows the students to research the cities, learning facts about each state and ultimately finding the answer by using Google Earth and seeing it geographically, almost putting them there at the actual capital. I think this activity would really grab a lot of students attention, and would be a lot of fun to do! You can locate this activity on this website: http://sitescontent.google.com/google-earth-for-educators/classroom-resources/lesson-plan-library.

Look at the list of lesson plans and click on: History, Scavenger Hunt of Capital Cities, 5- it will then upload a Microsoft Word Document and give further instructions.

ISTE Standards: 1a, 1b, 2a, 4a- These standards involve teachers using new technology and integrating it into the classroom to teach and educate students on new concepts and skills, then assessing them on the demonstration and understanding of the assignment given.

Washington D.C. Field Trip!- Map 1

What better place to visit then Washington, D.C.? I will never forget my 8th grade field trip to D.C. because it made the pictures within the book come to life; everything we learned about was real and it was right in front of my eyes! The topic would be "taking a look into the past!" What I mean by that is that everything within D.C. has history and a story behind it, there is a reason for its importance and being located in the area. Seeing the ten landmarks that I have chosen for my students would bring history to life, and being able to learn how we got to where we are today. Even though I have never been a huge history buff, I do think history is important to share with students, so they get a taste of what happened or what is still happening, and how progress has been made.

The topic would essentially be how leaders of our history impacted our future such as presidents which are a few landmarks I had chosen such as Lincoln and Jefferson Memorial, George Washington Monument and Ford's Theater, as well as the current president and residing in the White House. I then focused on leaders as in soldiers discussing the Korean War Veteran's Memorial as well as the Arlington Cemetery and being able to relate all those soldiers as fighting for our country. One of my favorite landmarks in Washington, D.C. is the Holocaust Museum this indicates a leader who impacted our future within a negative outcome but essentially sticks to the fact that leaders create an outcome whether it will be a positive or negative one.

The students will look at the buildings, pictures, descriptions and be able to take a sense of what the landmark is about. Each student will view the landmarks differently, but seeing the landmark will bring some clarity of the landmark to the student. There is nothing particular I would want them to look at, when visiting landmark you never pin point one thing to view, you want to take everything in. As I stated before after reading something from a book, seeing it in person will bring so much more meaning.

You can take a look at my map here at: http://goo.gl/maps/sen3S

Self- Grading Form

Our next assignment was creating a quiz and then implementing a spreadsheet that would grade the quizzes for you as students submit them. After watching the brief video, I decided to do my quiz based on the Nervous System. I was a Health Educator for two years and I would take two to three weeks to go through  each system of the body, but my favorite was the nervous system. So I went back through my quizzes that I had given in the past, and pulled questions that I had used in several different quizzes along the period of teaching it, and generated a quiz on Google Docs.

Once implementing the quiz, respondents take your quiz and can view their results on the spreadsheet provided as well!
 Check out my quiz, and see how much you really know about the nervous system at: http://goo.gl/DI6iq and then you can view your results here: http://goo.gl/83h5z!

After completing the quiz and spreadsheet, it was definitely a lot easier to sit back and watch the computer generate all the answers for myself; that is one thing I did not miss which was grading! So instead of taking extra hours to do so, this tool would be able to do it for me and would save a lot of time!

ISTE Standards: 1a, 2a, 3a & d- These standards reflect that new technology integrated into the school system can evaluate as well as elevate knowledge to the parents, teachers and students by taking current technology and knowledge to new technologies and situations!