Lights, Camera, Social Action

A few quick notes while I'm somewhat fresh. I have graded almost everything (I have Inspiration and your Rubrics left). Check your grades for my comments and to see if you have had an assignment returned to be fixed. There were many of you who did not finish the blog assignment or weren't really following the instructions. The specific instructions were in the "How to Post a Blog" attachment. I just uploaded a one-page version that I copied and pasted so everyone is clear; it can be downloaded from the assignment section. There is a specific way to name the entries, place the article title and author(s) and ask and answer two questions (which are prominently displayed so I can find them easily). Many students have yet to submit the blog address. The easiest way would be to simply copy and paste the address in the HTML Creator that comes up under the assignment.
Hopefully, many of you had the opportunity to do some filming this weekend. DON'T FORGET, YOU DO NOT NEED TO COME TO CLASS UNTIL 7:15 ON MONDAY. I am giving you some time to film or get together with your groups. Monday night, I will go over editing with iMovie and you can all work on your iMovie Proficiency assignment. Also, don't forget that the Copyright assignment needs to be completed on your own time and the Excel Spreadsheet assignment is available. If needed, I will go over Excel in class. There are only one or two steps that might be a little tricky. If you have started the assignment, ensure that your averages make sense. Many people include the day in the average, which messes up the graph.
If you are in class early on Monday, Bob has some dvds that have the project we will be working on in class. You can copy the contents of the dvd to your desktop once you have signed in . . .it takes about 5 minutes to copy.

Journal 7: " Copyright 101" by Kate Thompson, L&L, Volume 32, Issue 7, page 10. It can be found in the Features section. It's a short article that should compliment the Copyright assignment quite well.

Video did Not Kill the Radio Star

If eveyrone has recovered from our last episode of Surviving the Big Brother Idol So You Thing You Can Photoshop, then you should be ready for lights, camera, social action!! As I am still sweating from last night, I hope to be fully hydrated enough to introduce our movie project ;-)
I realize that Photoshop is a bit difficult (no one had the Credo "Photoshop Sucks", right?), but I thought you all did an amazing job last night! Thanks for all of your hard work. You will all have to trust me that taking the notes for a step-by-step lesson will only benefit you when you go back to Photoshop to make your Holliday cards.
Tonight we begin our movie projects. You will be gathering in small groups, 2 - 4, brainstorming an idea, and pitching it to your executive producer—me!
Journal #6 (the first of the second round of journals, same blog!!) is about video production. The article, "Promoting Equity with Digital Video," is found in L&L, Volume 31, number 4, page16. Two of the three authors are from San Diego State. I double-checked that you could all download it; as of 4:18 pm on July 27, it works.
Please try and keep up with your journals, they will be much more pleasurable if you can do one ever other day as opposed to 4 in one late evening.
Also, don't forget to get all assignments in: Inspiration, Filamentality, PowerPoint (graded by peers; I must have the rubric), PowerPoint Rubric (turned in for a separate grade), Photoshop, and you're all working on the Copyright assignment, right?

Swimming in Quicksand

It was very clear to me at the end of class last Thursday that y'all were feeling a bit overwhelmed with the pace of the course. I understand. We will do our best tonight to ensure that everyone feels comfortable, or at least capable of moving on. We will have our PowerPoint small group presentations, discuss what we saw and evaluate the effectiveness of your rubrics. I will also give you some time to work on your Inspiration/Kidspiration projects. Then we will see how much time we have to begin to brainstorm for our movie projects and/or discuss uploading artifact to Task Stream. I believe that we should be able to postpone the movie project for one day and still be okay!!

If you are struggling with your PowerPoints, I have added a two-slide sample PowerPoint on the assignment page. It may help if you are struggling with exactly what the slides could look like.

As far as the journals go, number 4 will be from the most current issue of L&L. It's even a free download. The article is from the Point/Counterpoint section of the May issue. It's called "Has the Gender Gap Closed?" by Abramson and Stephenson. Even thought the title of the assignment is Journal 1-5, for the summer I really thing that four articles are enough. If you want to do a fifth article for 2 points of extra credit, please talk to me. I changed the due date of all four articles to Saturday, July 29 at 11pm. That should give you more than enough time to catch up.

Are the NETS Dolphin Safe?

Hopefully, you are now knee-deep into a better understanding of the NETS for both teachers and students. You should be completing your newsletters and working on your PowerPoint project, as well as begining to think about the your rubric. Thursday's class will dive into Inspiration and Kidspiration and show you a way to use technology to assess student understanding of concepts.

Journal #3. I thought we would actually use a contemporary article about technology. Actually, it's a blog that discusses what Web 2.0 means and what it looks like. I would like you to go to this link: http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/hughes/1079, and read Gina Hughes' blog titled "What is Web 2.0?" At the end of her blog are some links. I would like you to explore two of the links and discuss them as well.

I should be in the lab early tonight (Thursday), so please come around 4:30 if you have any questions or need some help!!

The Chat in the Hat

So, hopefully you are all learing the tools to collaborate. When I was in high school, collaboration wasn't the norm; in fact, it was often seen as a sign of intellectual weakness. I know that some of you had similar experiences in school. Well, this isn't your grandma's school no more. There is so much to learn and amazing tools to allow teachers to make the curriculum fun and interesting. It's a shame that so many trees must die a senseless death as today's students try and make sense of an analog curriculum in a digital world :-)
You all should also be getting comfortable with webCT6, which we can now affectionately refer to as simply "The Six". I will continue to support you and, hopefully, you will continue to support your peers.
Today's topics will be PowerPoints and Rubrics as assessment tools. Both assignments are currently available on The Six.

Speaking of chatting, journal article number 2, "Chatting it Up Online" can be found with a simple search of the ISTE website. You sign-on, go to publications, select L&L, then find the "search past issues" on the right hand table. Once in the archives, find Volume 27, Issue 1, page 28. As an ISTE member, you are able to download the .pdf version of the article. I will probably post another article tomorrow . . .damn that summer schedule.

No Class on Wednesday—Yahoo!

I hope that everyone has got a good jump on the week's assignments. I see that about half of the class has submitted the intro letter and/or discussion board. Your goal by the end of the weekend is to have the Intro letter finished and posted on your blog and on the discussion board, as well as responding to three other students' intro letters. The Yahoo Bookmarks assignments should be manageable. The EdTechProfile should be the lowest priority; I can wait until the beginning of next week. Lastly, you have one journal article to respond to; see the journal article instructions and you should have no problems :-)

Good luck tonight with Dr. Hayden; SHE loves Filamentality. Feel free to email me through webCT if there are any questions. I'll see you all on Monday!!

Enjoy the picture of a night on the Pacific (I'm sure it's not as beautiful when you're in class).

Welcome and Bienvenidos to Educ 422

Did ya'll know it's summer? Well, it is, and we are going to have fun in spite of the fact that we are at CSUSM in the summer, at night, with absolutely no food or drink vendors open :-)
As we embark on our 5-week journey (at least it's not a Three-Hour Tour), you will learn a whole lot about technology and how to apply it in your personal lives and in your classrooms. I emailed everyone earlier to let you know that this week the schedule is a bit whacky, but you'll make it. There is a large amount of ground to cover, but don't worry. If you really want to be successful in this class, you will.
This week we have a number of assignments: Intro Letter (which is; hopefully, going to be your first blog entry) and discussion board (where you also post your letters and then respond to three peers' intro letters), you'll create a blog & respond to a journal article, take a technology survery (EdTechProfile), and Dr. Kathy Hayden will introduce you to Filamentality.
Phew, that seems like a lot. It is, but you will have fun anyway!!