Blog E Post

Chapter 4: Designing Lessons and Developing Curriculum with Technology and Chapter 9: Expressing Creativity with Multimedia Technologies 

GLOGSTER
One tool that really caught my eye in Chapter 9 is the Glogster.  The reason it caught my eye is the fact that it reminds me of a scrapbook page.  I like how you can incorporate your entire presentation into a poster type page.  There are some really neat features on this site.

• various backgrounds
• text boxes of various sizes, you can also scroll so that you do not have to enlarge your box to fit the entire text
• video boxes: you can add videos from your computer or internet
• image boxes: again you can add images from your computer or the internet
•  you can also link audio

According to the article, Teaching with Glogster in the Classroom, the glogster is a virtual poster.  It is a great teaching tool.  The colors and various eye catching graphics and effects, along with video, pictures, text and audio grabs the attention of the student.  This is not only a great tool for the teacher to use to present data.  It is also an easy way for the students to design a presentation for an assignment.  Plus you do not have to worry about content due to the fact that there is a glogster designed for education.  ( edu.glogster.com) 

 
 DIGITAL STORYTELLING
With the wide use of smart phones and digital video cameras most everyone has taken some type of video, such as, a dog playing, or our child performing, a special event and so on.  The technology we have now at our fingertips make video taping relatively easy.  Also, due to the fact that the video is no longer recorder onto film it is easy to edit and delete as often as we want.  This also gives a great learning tool to be used in the classroom.  What a great way to engage your students, by requiring them to work collaboratively on a video presentation. Digital storytelling is a great tool for social studies/history and language arts.  This is a real opportunity for the students to be creative.  The College of Education at the University of Houston maintains a digital storytelling site that gives examples of tools, evaluation criteria and links for more creative resources.

ASSESSING AND EVALUATING STUDENTS
According to our text, Transforming Learning with New Technologies, many times teachers spend  hours preparing and prepping lesson plans, and choosing engaging activities.  Often there is not much thought or preparation for assessing and evaluation during and after the lesson.  There are 3 factors that influence how teachers think about assessment:

1. Personal experiences. Teachers tend to teach the way they were taught, and assess as they were assessed.
2. Standardized testing. With so many "Must take" standardized tests some teachers tend to believe that this is the only assessment they must keep.
3. Teacher tests.  Due to the testing teaches themselves must pass in order to teach professionally, some teachers may tend to believe that standardized testing is the one and only true valid assessment format. 

No one way of assessment and evaluation is the ultimate way to go.  A combination of variety of assessments and evaluations will give you the most accurate picture of where your student measures up.  As much as everyone is against standardized testing, I still see value in it.  It is important to see where our education measures up with other areas.  We need to see where we fall short and need improvement.  In the same token it is good to see where we excel against others. I just don't think the tests should take hours day after day.  Plus when you tell a student...this one test will determine whether you advance to the next grade or not puts extreme pressure on that student.  Believe me, after taking the General Knowledge Test recently, I never want to feel that kind of stress again.  I have taken huge final exams before but nothing compares to the stress of that test.  So much rides on the outcome of that test! I know....I will have the pleasure of having that stress again....when I go for my teaching certification.  (Trying not to think about that right now)

http://www.toondoo.com/public/s/h/y/shysmom5807/toons/thumb_9043010.jpg

CONCLUSION
I really like the idea of using a glogster in my classroom.  I really think this will engage the students and they will even be eager to learn to create one on their own.  As for the digit storytelling, we all video tape things almost daily, so this would not be too challenging to do for an assignment.  I believe the hardest thing would be to limit the length of your story and to have it relevant to assigned content expectations.  Finally, my last topic is assessments and testing.  As I stated earlier, I know testing is important.  We all must be evaluated in some form from time to time.  As a teacher I would like to use different types of assessments in my classroom.  During a lesson I would add an oral piece of assessing where my students are.  Treat it as a question & answer session, but I would be asking them the questions.  Then I would use essay writing, presentations and or projects in order to assess where my students are, rather than always using the traditional multiple choice or fill in the blank type of test.  These different avenues would give my students different ways to excel.  Plus it would show me a thorough assessment of their understanding of the subject matter.  

RESOURCES
Davis,L. (2015, June 7th) Testing. Created using www.toondoo.com  

 Maloy,R., O'Loughlin, R., Edwards, S., & Woolf,B.(2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA:Pearson Education Inc.

TeachersFirst. GlogsterEDU- classroom resources.  http://www.teachersfirst.com/single.cfm?id=4733

Youtube video. Glogster in 90 seconds.  <iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MvC47fUANLk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>