Ms. Romano's English Class

The site that I created for the ITEC class is called Ms. Romano's English Class.
The URL is http://sites.google.com/site/teach104classroom/ The purpose of the site is to introduce new students to my classroom and to my expectations for them. I work at a continuation school and we might get new students every few weeks. For this reason, a website that walks them through what they should bring to class and what is expected of them could be useful. To be honest, I plan on deleting this site in a few weeks. My school will most likely use School Loop next year so there will be no need for it but, if not, maybe I will spend some time working on this over the summer and providing the web address to incoming students so that they and their parents could review it and so that there are no surprises.
I really like the idea of posting information for them on the website. It would be great to figure out how to post handouts that they could download and print so that they can get the material that they missed when absent-although my cynical side wonders if they would even access the information.
I would like to post tutorials on the website eventually. Or at least resources that would help them when they are writing (things like handouts and what not).

Final Thoughts about ITEC 814

This has definitely been an interesting class. I sort of wish that we had met more often so that we could have spent more time on each of the things that we were taught. I am definitely frustrated and disappointed with the final project (the web site). I feel I was able to create the site just fine but I could not incorporate the examples of student work the way I wanted to. I ended up copying and pasting the examples in order to at least show some of what they did.
I also feel that I didn't utilize the discussion posts in the right way-hard for me to navigate and keep track-but I at least should have posted my many questions in this format.
Overall I am happy with what I learned but I definitely think I will need refresher courses!

So, have been thinking a lot about the stuff we have been learning in class and how I can incorporate it all. To be honest I am feeling a little overwhelmed. I have been using Google Docs a lot and that is sort of hard to maintain and I have very few students in my classes-I teach special ed so I never have more than twelve students in one class. But the kids are into using Docs so I am happy. And honestly, it really is no different than grading and editing their hard copies. But I am excited about the other stuff that we have learned in class and I am trying to come up with some new lessons to incorporate the technology into my curriculum. I got to be completely honest-I am soooo happy that it is almost summer because I can work on some stuff then and use it next year!
It is so great to see my students working on Google Docs; I almost feel like I am tricking them! They are still just writing essays but when they don't finish and I assign it for homework, so many of them come into my room at lunch to get on a computer and work on the essay. The assignment is no different than it ever was-the only difference is Google Docs but they come in and work on their assignments way more than they did when they were just using paper and pencil! Is it really that easy? They seem way more engaged with writing using this modality! I love it!
I have shared the information with some of my colleagues at work and they are getting the same sort of response-it's fantastic!!! i don't even mind feeling slightly overwhelmed with the comments that need to be made on a daily basis! I still feel that I am learning as I go. For instance, today a student came in at lunch to work on his essay and when I checked my docs I saw what he worked on but it didn't seem finished. When I checked in with him he said he wasn't done and that he hadn't sent me anything new but I still received the changes he had made to his work. Does that mean that when we edit and comment once we've shared that we don't have to continue to share with each other and that it automatically shares the changes? Have to keep experimenting, but I am lovin' the process! And more importantly, so are my students! :)

Voicethread and Animoto

I have been thinking about Voicethread and Animoto and how I can use both in the classroom. I don't think I have a good idea of what I would do with Voicethread. It is really cool that you can speak over images and provide more information, but I don't really feel comfortable recording my own voice, so I think that it would be more trouble for me than it's worth. But I think Animoto is something that I can incorporate into my curriculum. I don't have it really worked out well yet, but I can see my students using Animoto after a poetry unit, either recording a poem set to instrumental music and images that reflect the theme of the poem or finding a song that is similar in theme to a poem they read. It's something that I have to plan out better but it's a first thought.

Voicethread Commentary

Animoto Propaganda

My picture

Teaching MyMaps Assignment

Last week was the start of a new grading period at my school so I decided to teach them how to post icons onto Google Maps. I had the students sign up for a Gmail account, had them work with a partner to find five things to do in their neighborhoods or city, and then sowed them how to use google maps. Basically, I recreated the first day of ITEC 814 with my students! It took three days. The students really liked all aspects of the assignments, especially personalizing their iGoogle page, and for the most part, they had no problems with using the icons to place on their maps. Some of them did have a hard time placing lines from location to location though. Sometimes they got too close to the icons which ended up moving the icon, others had a hard time with getting the line to start or to stop. I also had a hard time with this when I did this assignment for the first time, so I did warn them about those potential problems. I work with kids who have learning disabilities and they often get frustrated easily, but even when they had a hard time with drawing the lines, they keep with it, so I was very happy. I think they really liked the assignment and they saw it as something fun, so they didn't give up easily. I definitely want to incorporate more of these types of assignments in the future!

What I think about Google Tools

A few of my friends have told me about Google Docs and some of the other tools that we learned about in class today.  I always listened politely, smiled, and completely dismissed what they said. I never was really interested because I figured you had to be really computer and technology savvy in order to use the tools they mentioned. (Secretly, I always wondered how they even knew about these features!) 

But now that I (a technophobe) have successfully used Google docs, iGoogle, and Gooogle Maps, I am so excited. 

First off, I love how very simple they are to use! Who knew!!! 

Secondly, being the total teacher dork that I am, I love how I can incorporate these things into my lesson plans. I also like how if I were to truly incorporate some of these features into my job, the students would have to take responsibility for their own work, which is something I am constantly trying to get them to do! 

I do have some concerns though. The computers at my school and in my classroom are absolutely archaic! The collaboration tool was not too successful for me when we did the Google Maps activity. I am worried that it would fail miserably at work! Other concerns are that a lot of my students do not have internet access at home and there is no wireless access at my school so we would have to sign up for the lab in order to do a lot of these activities. These last two aren't huge concerns though because I am going to start off small. This is not going to be something that I use on a daily basis (yet) so these two concerns are irrelevant at this time! And in terms of the collaboration tool failing, I think I just need more practice and I also need to realize that sometimes it won't work smoothly and that's okay. The important thing is for students to try and to learn patience! Something we could all use!