Thursday, March 28, 2013

Blogs and Posting

BLOG POSTS/RESPONSES count for 25% of your grade.  I track not only your posts on your own blogs (15 unique posts are required), but your posts on other people's sites (1-2/ week are suggested).  And I absolutely factor in who is posting over the course of the semester vs. say, in the last three weeks of class.   Some of you are falling behind.  The more you post within your group, the less likely I am to miss a post of yours.  However, if you don't feel that you have enough people in your group to get inspired by/about (or they are not posting), feel free to look at other classmates' posts and respond!  I'll find your work.

Interactivity #4


The Pedagogical Uses of Technology Due date: Wednesday, April 3, 2013 by 5:00 pm EST

If you haven't already, please begin Interactivity #4

How many teachers use a Smartboard simply because there is one installed in their classroom instead of intentionally choosing the tool based on thinking deeply about what they pedagogically want to accomplish? At this point in the module, I want you to conscientiously think about where, when and how learning occurs and how to intentionally create technological environments that facilitate those learning goals. This is not an easy task. However, it is incumbent upon every teacher to approach technology integration in this way.
 

You will work individually on this assignment (this is not a group project).

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Interactivity #3 Feedback

All group spreadsheets and blog posts comprising Interactivity #3 have now been formally assessed and final scores have been posted to your Engrade accounts. 

The average score was quite high (86%). Some individuals and groups excelled at this assignment; other individuals unfortunately missed the target or did not participate at all.  However, most groups worked together very well to create an organized, content-specific inventory. Well done.

If you had points deducted from your individual score, it was probably for one or more of the following reasons:

  • Your contributions to the group spreadsheet was minimal, last-minute or less-than substantial (up to 20 points).
  • The group spreadsheet lacked a coherent organizational structure (10 points). Chapter Three in the course text provided you with a possible structure for categorizing your technologies (e.g., content management, authoring tools, collaboration, etc.).   While you were not required to use this particular structure, you were required to organize your technologies into some coherent structure. It was unacceptable to organize your inventory according to individual group names or to have categories assigned to specific group members. The group assignment was to produce one cohesive inventory—not multiple ones. Organization was worth 10 points according to the assessment rubric.

If you were docked points, please re-view the original Interactivity #3 guidelines and your Google spreadsheet prior to contacting me with questions or concerns. If you are still confused about your assigned score then send me an email with your specific concern to set up a phone discussion.

It is important that you understand the basic functionality of Google Spreadsheets, as each of you will use it for Interactivity #4 and also for the final project of the semester. If you are curious as to how Google Spreadsheets can support your teaching, [this is a good starter resource].





Interactivity #2 Feedback


**NOTE that in most cases, FEEDBACK on your INDIVIDUAL SUBMISSIONS was sent to each of you through ENGRADE.  My space is limited for feedback, so apologies in advance for 'short hand' communication.


The average score was a low C (70%) for this second interactivity.

There were many excellent (100-point) submissions that magnified all of the requirements of the assignment. You did not need to be particularly creative to earn 100 points, you just needed to understand and follow precisely the technical guidelines for this assignment.

The most common mistake was including an additional narrative (or in some cases, multiple paragraphs) to "explain" your ideas. Instead, your image and caption should have been able to stand together as one coherent message. Perhaps you interpreted the guidelines of "Successful upload of image and caption as a blog post" to mean something more than creating a single post with just an image and caption? It's hard to tell (This is another reason why emailing me ahead of the deadline with any questions of clarification will make the biggest difference in your submission scores).

Another common mistake was including in your caption and/or image a technology that was post-1990 (your parameters were the years 1820-1990). Keep in mind that schools are much slower to adopt new technologies, so although the personal computer may have been invented in the 1980s (larger computers in the 60s and teaching machines in the 50s), computers were not a major influence on schooling until fairly recently—computer labs were rare. Depending upon your subject area, they may not have been a major influence at all in schools. So school-based specificity as well as content-area specificity was essential for this interactivity.

There is also much confusion about technology itself.  Music itself is not a technology.  They ways you communicate or compose it are, e.g. a pen, iTunes, software, CD player.  However, iTunes is not a music education content-specific technology.  It all depends on how you use it.  Listing iTunes as a technology for the classroom is similar to listing a pencil, a book or a laptop computer.  It doesn't mean or accomplish anything unless you know what to do with it—meaning, what makes it content-specific.  Your URLs needed to point to something specific. 

Friday, March 15, 2013

Interactivity #3 Guidelines Now Available

For guidelines to the third interactivity, [click here] (these are always available). Please note it is a group activity, so I strongly encourage you to begin work on it as soon as possible and to anticipate technical snafus. I have changed the deadline to give you an . It is due no later than 5:00pm EST on Friday, March 25.

Yikes! Time Flies...

Greetings all - my apologies for being so radio silent! Confusing with an online course, I know. I'm in the middle of a move, so am tight with time. I'm posting the third interactivity in just a few minutes and will give you a few extra days to work on it—the least I can do. I'll be posting general feedback to Interactivity #2 later this evening. I'm really enjoying reading your blogs! Huge thanks for your patience. Lisa Phillips