Activity #8: Ddribbling Lessons

I have had an opportunity over the last couple of weeks to look at the lessons online. One of the really great features of the lessons is the way they flow from one lesson to the next. It is great to see the link to the standards. Made me wish that I had been able to utilize the unit when I was teaching computer to the middle school students. I did variations of the lessons, but nothing as complete as this is. Many of the lessons could easily be adapted to a younger audience which would help build a foundation for these lessons at a later stage of the students learning curve. Example: indexes and table of contents. Many students are completely unaware of what I am talking about when they come in looking for a book and I say here are several that may help you, look in the index and see if you subject, topic, or individual is listed. Blank stare! I am planning on using several of your great examples for source notes, especially the one for internet websites. Students are not sure what is needed for the citation. With History day fast approaching this is a tool that will come in handy. I personally could use the lesson on Boolean searches!

Activity 9 Streaming Video

I had the opportunity to attend a workshop in the fall given by the district for Media Specialists in which UnitedStreaming was demoed, and I had an opportunity to explore the features of the website. I found the lessons and videos on the secondary level to be quite extensive. As the manager of the password for Henry I quickly passed on the passwords and features to the Henry staff. Many of the staff took the challenge to explore and I know there are several staff utilizing the website. I personally have not downloaded any of the videos but I have had fun looking at some of the video's on some of my favorite topics. We are asking staff to avoid downloading the videos during the school day. We are concerened that if a large number of staff download at the same time especially during our heavy useages times the system slows to a crawl. I will try to report back on this topic once our history day projects begin. I hope to find videos to download and make available to students on various topics that they may choose.

RSS feed

Well I give up on trying to upload everyones blog accounts. I hope everyone is doing better than I. I will ask for assistance at class this week. I have tried to bring the subscriptions in several times, but all I get is zero subscriptions. Honestly, I have my doubts that I will ever use this method of communitation with students if they have as much frustration as I have had. I know there are other venues out there, and I would persue them first.

Since class last time, Liz and I have had several of her classes here in the lab working on thier first research project. She demonstrated the use of the Research Project Calculator to her group. I also posted a connection on my school web page. I demonstrated the tool to my 9th grade advisory class. As history day research begins I will redemonstrate to my advisory group this tool to help them plan out their strategies for tackling the project.

Activity 5 Create and Maintain a Teacher Web page

Henry High School asks all its staff to maintain a web page connected to Henry Home Page. My page is at http://henry.mpls.k12.mn.us/Media_Center.html

I have placed a connection to resources that I hope students will find useful as they research. My latest link was quite the challenge. I have problems linking the new "card" catalog. The old link kept overridding the new link to Destiny. I finally dumped the whole section and redid it. Sometimes a person just has to start over rather than redo.

I will be adding the link to the RPC for students I was very impressed with the features of the website. We used it today with the students in three of Liz Roth's music classes. It allowed the students to visualize the best way to break down the assignment into reasonable segments without overwheming them.

RSS & Newsreaders

In class on Wednesday night we set up our Blogline account. After taking the time to set up the account I could see how I might find it useful with students in groups wishing to communicate with each other. My classes at Hamline have a similar set up only it is an account only accessible by students within the class. We would read articles and then report back to the group about our article. They would then respond to our statements. This format is a little more public than I am comfortable using with students.

Today I tried to download the names of the various blogs via the file that Ann sent. No matter which way I tried to download and import the file it continued to say that there were no subscribers. I am hoping that it is a simple fix. I haven't located a resource that I want to add as an individual subscription, but will keep looking.

Using Public Library Card Online

This morning I went online to see if my library card was still active before class on Wednesday. Surprise, Surprise it still works. I took the opportunity once on line to help a student search for information on King Arthur and the Knights of the round table. There are lots of features to the various data bases. At first we went to the Premire database by mistake. Only found book reviews, but finally caught on and went to the academic database and found over 500 articles for him. I got hooked on reading about an archelogical dig they did for a television documentary. It was fun to read as I have had the opportunity to visit England and several of the sites listed. Makes me want to travel to England again. I can certainly see that I will need to practice before helping Liz's IB students. This is certainly going to be my practice year.

First night class

Wow what a lot I have to learn! It seems as if each and every class I have taken there is always something new to learn and take back to my students. This class will certainly challenge my learning curve and benifit all my students. It was interesting to see on the wall where each of the participants felt their level of expertise fell. Very colorful!