Sharing Tips and Tricks of Using Technology in the Classroom Part 2

[Carrie Albin]

In your courses you have been asked to share your tips and tricks of using technology in the classroom. 

[Daniel Michael Beuchert]

For my CEP 811 class, we are working on STAIR projects, or Stand Alone Instructional Resource projects. As I work on my STAIR, I have chosen Moodle as my method of making this assignment come into being. I have access to Moodle from Ingham Intermediate School District. You need access to a server carrying Moodle in order to create lessons in Moodle, but luckily it is free. If you don't have access to Moodle, you could try to convince your district to look into it since it's a free web application! If you have something like Blackboard available, that could work too.

 

My main like of using a system like Moodle is it is a course management system that allows me to create a lesson with multimedia presentations and linked quizzes. This allows students to go through the material in the way that suits them best (ie, text, video, sound, pictures). At the end of a presentation, the students can be quizzed. If they don't do so well, they can be taken to another spot, or the origional spot, with the information to answer the questions correctly.

 

This type of feedback is exciting, especially in a teaching environment where students are in varying spots in up to three different subject materials in the same class. Moodle allows classes to be setup for each subject that I teach, which I plan to integrate into the curriculum for each in the future. I am hoping that this helps me give quicker feedback to my students, and also allows them to learn in a way that is more comfortable to them! In my mind, Moodle is worth it, if only for the ability to get students understanding checked so efficiently.

[Colin Gallagher]

We've been on a bit of a Digital Storytelling rampage this year gobbling up all sorts of different ways our students can tell stories.

 

The latest one we have signed up for is http://www.zooburst.com

It basically is, at first glance, a 3D Pop-Up book creator. Students can add text and audio recordings to each page along with images from zooburst or their own pictures.

The little twist with Zooburst is that you can replay the story as an augmented reality book with your webcam. By moving your hand across the webcam screen the pages turn.

We're still trying to assess the added value of it as it is early days in testing it out. 

[Melissa White]

Sounds neat!

[Allyson bush]

Tonight while bookmarking some sites I looked into the Diigo toolbar a little closer at diigo.com a social bookmarking site that I'm sure most of you already know about. I installed the toolbar in seconds and it was automatically added to my firefox toolbars. Simple and easy. However that was only the beginning.

I wanted to save an image and when I rolled my mouse over the image the save disc image popped up. I clicked on that and the image was automatically saved to my Diigo site. Fast and so easy! There is also an unread section, a recent section, and a highlight option that allows you to highlight an online article and that highlight will show up again on any computer when you reopen it. That's incredible! One of my biggest problems with reading online is that I can't highlight or mark.

If you haven't tried the Diigo toolbar, I highly recommend it!

[Anne Flynn]

I had my first experience using www.turnitin.com this week, and it's really cool!  I admit, I was "pushed" into using it, as our adminstration made it a schoolwide task for each teacher to used turnitin to document a "Writing Across the Curriculum" effort.  However, I am glad I was able to try it out!  As a high school science teacher, I had not had experience with on online assignment "collector" like turnitin.  It was very easy to create an account, set up an assignment, and give my students a code that would direct them right to my page.  Most all of my kids had already created an account for another class, so they just needed to type in my code and password and upload their assignment!  When I log in, I now see the list of my students, the title of their paper, and what is REALLY cool, an "originality report" that helps me know how much of the paper is original work or not!  I am still learning on how to best use this feature, but I can see that it would be really helpful to check out sources cited, possible plagarism, etc.

[Tammy Maginity]

That is great. Sometimes being "forced" ends up to be a positive. I have not used this service but I think it is a great idea.

[Angela Engardio]

One of the things I have been trying using more technology and specifically Web 2.0 in my classroom is updated reviews.  I have done the jeopardy, ball toss, and other traditional review activities.  However, I still found many students having questions about the study guide or still not completing the guide.  I wanted to integrate more technology into these reviews and provide more universal access.

 

I made a first attempt at this sort of review using my classroom website on Blackboard and the discussion board.  I assigned students different topics from the review guide.  These students needed to research and post information about their topic to the classroom discussion board.  My plan was that students with questions when completing their study guide would visit the site and look up the information put together by their peers.  However, I the organization was not ideal.  I am now looking to do the same type of review tactic but using a wikispace site rather than the classroom discussion board.  Students would then have access similar to the discussion board, however, I like the organization ability on this site.  I also think the idea that students will be more accountable with their information, since it is posted for all public view not just classmates.

[Andrell D. Williams]

Survey Monkey is a website that was formed to allow users to create survey's.  Survey Monkey offers it's users

• Get unlimited questions: Create as many surveys as you like, with as many questions as you like.
• Print and download your results: Export your data into Excel, PDF, and CSV files whenever you want.
• Enjoy premium features: Customization, advanced logic, and more!

This was a great resource or tool to make a form of a survey.  It is user friendly.  I used this for one of my assignments for my 812 class

[Andrell D. Williams]

GarageBand! If you are trying to create a podcast use this program.  This is a great tool for mac users.  I used it to create one for my edu tech 812 class it was easy.  You can also export it to several media programs, itunes being one that i used.  Podcast and Videocast are the way to go.  I think these are great teaching tools because it allows you to learn at your own paste, because they can be paused, rewinded, fast forward.  If you are trying to get a message across or teach a lesson try this tool.

[Teresa]

I created my own voice threading site and I thought that it was great.  In my classroom I can post a picture of a math problem and voice thread the process to solve the problem for students who need additional help.  Or I can have my students describe the steps in their own way to solve the problems either to rap, sing, or draw out the process.  Teaching at an Alternative School I need other venues to motivate and spark student learning.

 

Teresa Madyun

[Shannon Forsberg]

I would like to share a tip for all you teachers out there who have a trouble keeping up on new students in your class, ie interests, prior knowledge ect. Through google, they have an online survey application which allows you to create and share surverys. The feature called Google Forms can be located through your gmail account or by googling forms. The best feature about this is you can require questions to be answered, so students cannot skip ones they dont feel like answering. Once surveys have been completed, google breaks down the data in all types of charts and graphs! For a non math teacher, this was wonderful. I hope you can all utilize this free application and get some great background information on your students. I know I did!

[Dilys Gibbs-Harrison]

Google Forms and Voice Threads sound like great ideas. I am going to check them out. Thanks everyone for their ideas on using both.