ECOMP 6106: Curriculum Unit Website

What is the purpose for creating a teaching website?

Your website should be designed to provide you and others (i.e. parents and/or students, other teachers, administrators, and colleagues with whom you collaborate) with access to information and documents that are part of the unit you will be designing during this course. Websites provide easy access to materials, hyperlinks, online resources, and assessment documents. Your website should become a compendium of information and resources for your curriculum unit. Plan your website to make use of the power of the Internet to assist with the storage, retrieval, and communication of information and documents.

Teaching Website: Internet Safety
Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• Unit Goals
• Unit Questions
• Assessment Plan
• Unit Resources
• Instructional Procedures
• Introduction
• Cyberbullying
• Digital Footprint
• Internet Credibility
• Phishing
• Viruses
• Conclusion
• Technology Integration
• Differentiated Instruction
• Communication

ECOMP 6106: Working with Databases

InspireData and Roller Coasters
Using the Roller Coasters database that comes with InspireData explore and become familiar with a variety of the software's features. Your job is to come up with ONE question, TWO interesting relationships, and SOME thoughts or explanations for the relationships. Create four different plots of your data and make sure your plots clearly represent your data.


Question: What is the relationship in top speed when comparing steel to wood coasters?

Interesting Relationship #1:  While the two fastest roller coasters were the only two steel-launched coasters in the database, the slowest coaster was also a steel structure (the Cobra).

Interesting Relationship #2:  Besides the slowest and the fastest coaster categories, the rest of the roller coasters surveyed fall in the middle and find themselves in three separate but consolidated groups: the first a combo of wood and steel structures, the second a grouping of four wooden coasters, and the final set an all-steel grouping.

Explanations: 

• It would seem that, when it comes to top speed, steel coasters that have the assistance of being launched are by far superior. While the database does not explain what the difference between steel and steel-launched coasters is, I would theorize that it has something to do with inertia.
• Perhaps the clustering outlined in relationship #2 has something to do with the geographical location of the coasters? Perhaps it may have something to do with where the roller coasters were built and the environmental conditions they must constantly deal with.? However, when the speed variable is compared to the location variable the resulting graph does not appear to support this hypothesis.

ECOMP 6106: Essential Conditions

Assignment #1:  Work in groups with Intel's Visual Ranking Tool to consider these essential conditions in your school districts.

 Assignment #2: After you have read the essential conditions and have used the Visual Ranking Tool, reflect on the conditions present in your own school district and/or teaching situation.

In my school district, the essential conditions have primarily focused on getting “buy-in” from everyone in order to move ahead with any technology integration plan. During my ten years in-district, too often funds were spent on a piece of technology or service because someone thought it was “cool” but would move ahead without consulting with or even talking with the personal who would do the actual implementation. Now our district is trying to correct this error using a District Tech Team that has teacher representation from each school building. In addition, each proposal now includes plans on how we will fund the technology, how will support for successful integration be provided, and how will we know when we have succeeded. This is still a new process and we are still working to get everyone on board to this different approach.

One area that we are still lacking in is Supportive External Contexts. It is only with the recent hardships with trying to maintain current funding levels, let alone funding for future growth, that has pushed the administration to seek out ways that we can build stronger support from the community. The plan is twofold: improve communication with the community while also showing them that we are doing this at a cost savings to the community. For example, we have reduced the amount of paper and ink used to print off notices in favor of an Altert-Now automatic email system, a Twitter feed that is available by both our website and by following, and just recently an Apple TV setup in the main lobby to showcase what students are doing each day within and outside of the classrooms. We have not had these systems in place long enough to assess whether these investments have paid off or not, but administrators remain hopeful (as do we in the IT department). 

ECOMP 6106: Curriculum Design

Assignment: Create A KWL Chart

Use either MS Word, Kidspiration, or Inspiration to create a KWL chart that is similar to the images posted below. Have some fun with the design of your KWL.

• In the K section (What I know) describe what you understand about Curriculum Design. 
• In the W Section (What I Want to know) describe what you hope to learn about curriculum design from this course.  Send your KWL to the course instructor. 
• We will complete the L section (What I learned)  later on in the course. 

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ECOMP 6106: What is Understanding?

Assignment: Do a search on your own to find other articles on “Understanding” and write your own definition what “Understanding” is and how do you know you or a student has achieved understanding. 

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Article:

Perkins, D., & Blythe, T. (1994). Putting understanding up front. Educational Leadership, 51(4), 4-7. Retrieved from http://emp.byui.edu/HUNSAKERS/TuF Understanding up Front.pdf 

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Understanding is the ability to take knowledge and/or skills that has been learned and knowing when and where to apply them to when confronted with a situation/problem.  It is not simple regurgitation of facts or recounting of information discussed previously. Instead, it is the ability to know when to employ them given different situations with different and sometimes unique variables. For me, that means constantly reminding students that the knowledge and skills they learn from me in computer literacy classes are flexible and can be applied to events and challenges in other classes. For example, say I should students how to take a Keynote and show them how you can export the file into different formats including images. Then, when they are working with podcasting and adding images to make an enhanced podcast, I want them to be able to remember what they learned from their Keynote study and realize they can use it to create their own custom images to go into their podcast project. 

Take a moment to reflect the following quotes. Which one do you agree with most and why?

1. “Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach.” By Aristotle 
2. “If you truly want to understand something, try to change it.” By Kurt Lewin

The first quote is an important point to keep in mind because, as was brought up in our class discussion, there are educators out there who know their subject backwards and forwards but they do not know how to teach it to others. If you understand the subject matter then you can better respond to “left-field” questions, perhaps even the bizarre ones, that might catch you off guard. Understanding will also allow you to be ready to accept new information, evaluate it, and accept how it might change the circumstances of the topic. In this way, we “advance” our understanding of the topic to include the new information. (Perkins & Blythe, 1994)

The second quote I think lends itself to the idea of turning students into teachers in order to building understanding. In order to change something you have to know how it works and how it interacts with the surrounding environment. Similarly, in order for a student to take something they’ve learned and turn around to teach it to another successfully, they have know how it works and how it affects the people and things around it. They know how they were affected by the knowledge, and now they see how another person responds to the information and whether or not the response is similar or different. This experience can give a student a change of perspective on the topic and further their understanding.
 

ECOMP 6106: 21st Century Skills

Assignment: Are you a 21st Century Teacher? Respond to following questions.


In what ways do you consider yourself a 21st century teacher?
I consider myself a 21st century teacher in my openness to new and different ways to teach and learn material. I am aware of the traditional tools and skills used to teach content but also keep a look out for new tools and see how they can be integrated with traditions. I believe that a synthesis of traditional and 21st century tools can create a rich and beneficial learning experience for both student and teacher.

Are you collaborative? If so, provide some description of how you collaborate and with whom.
As the technology coordinator for my building, it is central to my job to be a collaborative teacher AND learner. I ask questions of teachers about what they are teaching and how, so that I can present them with new resources that they could integrate into their lessons in order to enhance the student experience. A key part of this process is finding teachers who are willing to collaborate and take risks. It is these teachers for whom I will “go to bat for” freely and give 110%. After all, are we not asking students to be risk takers as they learn about new things and try different ways to express their knowledge and comprehension?
As a life-long learner, I freely admit to my students that I don’t everything and get excited when a student teaches me something new.  I love it when I can place a student into the role of teacher because I think teaching someone something is a great way to cement comprehension, plus it can provide a huge boost to a students’ self-esteem and self worth.

How do you use technology in your classroom and in your professional teaching practice?
In my classroom, which is a computer lab, technology is driving force as the goals of my course is to provide students with the skills to use computers effectively and safely with creativity.

How do you use technology to assess students?
I am constantly experimenting with different technology tools to assess my students. I’ve used rubrics, online quizzes, and oral presentations. I’d like to look into having students create digital ePortfolios. I’ve also helped other teachers implement technology-based assessments using social networking vehicles, such as WallWisher in language arts and an Edmodo classroom in social studies.

Do you use technology to communicate with parents and the community? What technologies do you use and how do you use them?
Technology for the purpose of communicating with parents and the community is become a critical issue in my school. All teachers are accessible via email from the school website, and administrators are pushing more and more for each teacher to have (and maintain) a website. We communicate grades and assessments via a digital grade book, PowerSchool, and provide a portal for both students and parents to use to view this information at any time. This year my school is using a Twitter feed and a Google Calendar widget to communicate important news and events to the community. And next on my To-Do list is to setup an Apple TV to a display in the main lobby of the school building so that we can stream images of field trips and events while also providing visual documentation of all of the wonderful projects and products students are creating in their classes.

ECOMP 5004: Biopoem Project

Assignment #1 - Biopoems in the Classroom


The biopoem project can be used in classes and courses across the curriculum, as we did, as an kind of ice breaker activity where students have the opportunity to learn some basic facts about their peers. For students, this will kick off the making of connections between one another. For the teacher, this will help foster the development of the classroom culture.  Biopoems also provide teachers with the opportunity to integrate a potentially new piece of technology, like Glogster, as a possible choice for students to express their knowledge and understanding. 

Teachers could also use this concept with students so that they will construct another biopoem, but this time the students get to do a little role-playing. In language arts class, for example, students chooses a character from a book they're reading for class. In social studies, students do their writeup on a pharaoh they've been studying from Ancient Egypt. When we get to science, students must create a biopoem based on an element form the Periodic Table. Teachers could also use the biopoem project and turn it into a game of "Guess Who?" where students must use of their detective skills to figure out who the poem is about. The possibilities may be limited only by one's imagination.

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Biopoem.ME

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Biopoem.TEACHER