Final Reflection Blog

From this course, I have realized that when integrating technology in the classroom, to be effective the technology needs to accomplish set goals and be aligned with the curriculum. Too many times people think "hey if I just use technology with my kids somehow, I'm being innovative." Well, no. Students need to effectively be able to use and understand the technology, there must be a set goal one wants to accomplish with the technology, and of course it has to be aligned with curriculum standards and benchmarks. There is so much out there related to web based 2.0 technology. The one thing I'm really going to try to do next year is create podcasts on math instruction done in the classroom to post on my classroom blog. I was scared at first to even try to do a podcast and when I did it for this class I had a million problems. I feel confident now and will do it for sure next year. I feel I've met my personal goals for this class. My main goal is to keep learning new things/information that I can incorporate into my classroom and use to improve my teacher instruction and effectiveness. My new goal for the future is to use this new found knowledge to increase student achievement, performance, and motivation.

Project Evaluation Blog

How would you approach another project like this type differently?

Obviously, if I were to do another project of this type, I would like to implement it at the beginning of the school year. For this project, I considered the class as a whole, and as a whole, the class struggled with reading informational text. Next year, I would like to find individual student needs and find a way using technology to address them. I also, from the beginning, would keep a Raz-Kids folder to track individual student progress throughout the entire year to keep in their portfolios. The progress would count school usage as well as home usage.

Lessons learned?

Technology is not always dependable. We had major issues with our laptop carts this year. Also, even though some may think websites like Raz-Kids are basically student operated and they can be let go independently, they still need to be closely monitored. I had some students who liked to "fake read" and pick any answers they wanted on the quizzes. I also for next year, need to post and recognize high scorers, high achievers, and students who accessed the website at home often because everyone deserves praise and needs motivation!

What ways will you endeavor to do the same project again? What will you change?

I will for sure utilize Raz-Kids in my classroom for all students. They need all the help they can when it comes to reading comprehension and one way to improve on that is reading books at their level. As I mentioned before, I want to focus on individual student needs with some aspect of technology rather than just lumping the class together as a whole, keep progress folders in their portfolios, and publicly recognize individual student successes and achievement.

Podcast

Since I am having great difficultly with my Podcast, please visit http://stephgreen.posterous.com/
to listen to my Podcast!!!

Internet Research for TechQuest

Internet Research for TechQuest

Results of Search/Search Engines

I conducted an interview with our Writing Specialist Jill Larkins. She was introduced to Raz-Kids.com in the early 2000’s when she was doing her student teaching with Livonia Public Schools in Livonia, Michigan. When she was hired at our building, the website was one of the first things she suggested that my principal purchase for all grades and all teachers. Mrs. Larkins pulls out students from each class that are extremely below grade level in the subject of Reading. She stated that she has noticed an increase in enthusiasm with reading, as well as increased DRA levels, and various reading fluency/comprehension skills being used since Raz-Kids.com has been implemented. She regularly checks every teacher’s Raz-Kids account to document student achievement. The only students she hasn’t witnessed positives in related to Raz-Kids are those with severe reading disabilities. Raz-Kids.com has a phenomenal website. The website contains tabs for Books, Getting Started, and Teacher Corner. Under Teacher Corner, there are links for Video Library, Training, Summer Material, and Teacher Tips. It also goes into depth how Raz-Kids.com is linked with RtI. Everything is right there for you on the site and easy to navigate. Raz-Kids.com is a branch of Learninga-z.com. Learninga-z.com is a main educational website with various branches including Readinga-z.com, which I use daily to accommodate the various read levels in my classroom, Sciencea-z.com, Reading-Tutors.com, Vocabualrya-z.com, and Writinga-z.com. Apparently, we also have a subscription to Writinga-z.com, but I currently do not utilize that resource. After spending much time on the International Reading Association site with my Reading Specialist, we could not find much on Raz-Kids.com other than the original site and a link to http://www.readinga-z.com/research/index.html. This site provided a tremendous amount of material on the aspects of Readinga-z.com, not so much Raz-Kids.com. On this site it had descriptions, findings, recommendations, citations, and alignment with research for phonological and phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, leveled reading, alphabet, preschool, and parental involvement as well as a paper titled “Providing Differentiated Instruction to Meet the Individual Needs of Students,” by Adria F. Klein. By searching Bing.com, I found a review of Raz-Kids.com as well as reviews of many other educational websites. On http://brighthub.com/education/k-12/reviews/32285, Raz-Kids.com received five stars out of five stars on the categories of Online Program, Collection, Cost, and Quality. It was also noted that the majority of people who utilize Raz-Kids.com also utilize a program called Tumble-Books, which is very similar. We just received a subscription to Tumble-Books. The article was dated February 2010. By searching on altavista.com, I came across some data pertaining to Raz-Kids. On www.quantcast.com/raz-kids.com, 89, 545 people in the United States use Raz-Kids.com per month. The majority of those people are female and also use a program called Starfall. We used Starfall my first year at ABT Elementary, but are currently not at this time.

What I Learned

It was astounding how Raz-Kids.com is linked to so many other sites I use or have used in the past. I also learned that Raz-Kids.com is more of a branch-off of Learninga-z.com rather than its own website. There was an incredible amount of information on Learninga-z.com as opposed to just Raz-Kids.com, which was probably due to just that. Using Tumble-Books, Reading-a-z.com, and Writinga-z.com may help the implementation of Raz-kids.com since they are all related and similar. Narrowing my TechQuest project to reading informational text, more specifically in the areas of Science and Social Studies may have been too narrow of a topic??? This may have hindered finding what I was looking for specifically. Next time, I will definitely allot myself more time for research and explore more online educational technology magazines and publications as well as dig deeper for teacher personal experiences.

812 Final Draft

According to Dr. Yong Zhao, when it comes to technology integration in the classroom to address a particular problem, the problem has to be “mine.” One problem I have in my classroom that I would like to address is reading comprehension, more specifically reading comprehension when it comes to informational text in the subjects of Social Studies and Science. I have taught various grade levels and reading informational text has always been a struggle. However, this year it has been a HUGE struggle. The majority of the students in my school read below or significantly below grade level. I teach fifth grade and have a class of thirty wonderful students. Ten out of the thirty are Special Ed and have IEP’s. Twenty out of the thirty have failed at least one time. Obviously, I have many challenges. My students perform fairly well when it comes to reading narrative text. Narrative text is easier to read, can be read at a faster pace, and is more enjoyable to read. When it comes to Social Studies and Science, well, that is a completely different story. Often, I pair my students hi/low when we read from our Social Studies and/or Science texts. According to Brophy, pairs and small groups aide in student learning and achievement. I agree with Brophy, but I feel at times I am holding my higher level readers back by making them read with the lower level readers and I can tell they want to work independently sometimes. Also, my low level students have to be able to read independently because obviously, they won’t always have a partner in the real world. I don’t understand how some of my students have gotten this far lacking this critical skill and I can’t allow them to continue especially since they will be entering middle school next year. Reading informational text is crucial to success and can’t be ignored. In conversation with other upper elementary teachers in my building, they share my struggles. Our main question is, “What can we do to increase informational text reading comprehension that our students will be on board with?” For my project, I plan on incorporating Raz-Kids.com to aide in informational text reading comprehension.

The Reading Specialist in my building purchased a subscription to Raz-Kids.com this year. We have a ton of resources available to us, and many teachers haven’t utilized this website. When speaking with my Reading Specialist and my concerns regarding reading informational text, she strongly suggested that I take the time and try Raz-Kids.com with my students. Raz-Kids.com is a website that contains hundreds of animated books for reading practice. By using the site, students can improve their reading skills by listening for modeled fluency, read for practice, record their reading, and check comprehension with quizzes. They can listen to books read aloud, read with vocabulary and pronunciation support, or read without support. Students are motivated by “Raz Rocket” where they can earn stars for completed stories and quiz scores and gain ranks. The “Teacher Corner” tab has information on getting started, a video library, training resources, and summer materials.

I’ve sent out the parent letter provided by Raz-Kids.com home. There is an English version as well as a Spanish version, which is very convenient. Recently, I performed a Running Records reading assessment on each one of my students. I used this information to assign them stories on Raz-Kids. All students were assigned informational and narrative text stories. Each student was given their user name and password. They are to complete all of the stories assigned to them before they can move up to the next reading level. Students are given time twice a week during laptop time and can utilize the five desktop computers in the room if they finish work early to go on Raz-Kids.com. I also plan to have Raz-Kids.com be a center sometimes when we have centers twice a week. Raz-Kids.com can be accessed anywhere with internet connection. I individually met with students to formulate a realistic goal of when they should be moving up to the next reading level. I plan to track their progress on Raz-Kids.com bi-weekly as well as give them short ten question informational text assessments from another resource I use, Study Island, to track progress. After this course, I plan to continue tracking their progress this way and at the end of the year, analyze the data as well as their Social Studies and Science grades. For summer practice, I plan to utilize the summer materials located under the “Teacher Corner” tab. In the teaching aspect, I am integrating this technology resource to strengthen reading skills for Social Studies and Science. In the learner aspect, the student is receiving added support in reading comprehension to apply to all subjects. This technology assists in all subjects, but I mainly want to focus on Social Studies and Science. Finally, this technology resource can be accessed in the classroom setting as well as any place with internet access.

Tech Survey

Click here to take survey

812 TechQuest Draft 1

TechQuest
Draft 1

According to Dr. Yong Zhao, when it comes to technology integration in the classroom to address a particular problem, the problem has to be “mine.” One problem I have in my classroom that I would like to address is reading comprehension, more specifically reading comprehension when it comes to informational text. It just doesn’t stick in their brains and it drives me nuts! The majority of the students in my school are below, or significantly below grade level in the subject of Reading. We are constantly trying to improve in that area and midway through last year, we hired a Reading Specialist for our building. I teach fifth grade and have a class of thirty wonderful students. Ten out of the thirty are Special Ed and have IEP’s. Twenty out of thirty have failed at least one time. Obviously, I have many challenges When reading narrative text, for the most part, my students comprehend very well. They can summarize, retell, respond to questions, etc pretty good…probably because narrative text is more “fun” to read. However, in the areas of Science and Social Studies…not so good. I am a very hands-on, visual person and as I mentioned, love my Promethean Board, so of course I incorporate all of those aspects into all subjects especially Science and Social Studies. Often, I pair my students Hi/Low when we read from our Social Studies and/or Science texts. According to Brophy, pairs and small groups aide in student learning and achievement. I agree with Brophy, but I feel bad making all of my high level students read with low partners because they really want to do their own work and I can tell they get bothered always having to be a helper. Also, my low level students have to be able to read independently because obviously, they won’t always have a partner in the real world. Unfortunately, reading informational text is a very important life aspect and can’t be ignored or brushed aside. In conversation with other upper elementary teachers in my building, they share my struggles. Our main question is, “What can we do to increase informational text reading comprehension that our students will be on board with?” In 810, I designed many learning aides with Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel for this problem. In 811, I designed a StAIR for the Revolutionary War. The materials from both classes aide to an extent, but there is still something missing. For my TechQuest, I plan on incorporating Raz-Kids.com to aide in informational text reading comprehension.

Raz-Kids.com is a website for grades K-6 designed to improve students reading skills by allowing them to listen for modeled fluency, read for practice, record their reading, and check their comprehension through assignments and quizzes. Students can either choose books in the bookroom and read freely or read books assigned by their classroom teacher according to their DRA level. As students read fluently and comprehend, they earn stars. With the stars they earn, they can purchase parts to construct their own rocket and move up in the Raz Rocket Rankings. Raz-Kids.com also gives educators choices such as being able to listen to books read aloud, read with vocabulary and pronunciation support, read without support, and track student reading progress through assignments and quizzes over fluency and comprehension. There are many varieties of story types, genres, and themes to choose from. New books are added regularly and all stories are animated. This website must be purchased. The cost ranges between $50.00 and $70.00 per classroom. This tool can be accessed anywhere where there is internet access. Parents and guardians receive a letter giving an overview of the website. The letter also supplies them with a username and password for home use. According to “Teaching” by Jere Brophy, “students learn more when most available time is allocated to curriculum related activities” and he also stresses the importance of curriculum alignment “to create a cohesive programme for accomplishing instructional purposes and goals.” I plan to use this tool at least once a week during our scheduled computer time.

End of the Class (811) Reflection

During this course, I learned that different teaching strategies need to be used interchangeably to reach maximum student potential. Many teachers think that using the deductive approach will get the job done but it won't. Everything I learned from this course I want to incorporate into my classroom-blogs for parents, creating various webquests, and the StAIR project. I now feel very comfortable in creating a StAIR and I am excited to create more for my students. Being able to view other peoples blogs, webquests, and StAIRs helped me critique my own and give me knowledge what quality/effectiveness should be when it comes to them. What I wanted to get out of this course was new ideas involving technology that will strengthen the skills for my students and that has been accomplished. I now have so many new tools, ideas, and skills I can use and I even think I can get my anti-technology coworkers to try some of them out. I want to keep continuing learning new concepts and approaches to make myself better and I know this will happen as I continue on with this masters program at MSU.

Online Learning

WebQuests are something I am for sure going to create and integrate into my classroom. I think they will help tremendously with Science and Social Studies, two subjects my students struggle with the most. My students also need help with following directions and navigating the Internet, which WebQuests will assist with as well. Two types of pedagogical strategies I want to use with my students with these Webquests would be Problem Solving and the Deductive strategy.I also think my students could benefit with Online Field Trips, especially since I have an enormous Promethean Board in my classroom:) Its hard to leave the school to learn sometimes so this way the learning could come to us. Educational Blogs would be tremendously hard to do with my students. I teach in a very economically challenged environment. The majority of my students do not have a computer and if they do they don't have Internet. The class I have now is the most challenging class Ive had in my five years of teaching. Most do not have proficient keyboarding skills, which is something we are working on now. Socially, they have a really hard time getting along, working together and respecting each other. Unfortunately, I fear my students would use the blog to post inappropiate comments that were not school related.

Google Presenter

Google Presenter

Google Presenter is a web-based 2.0 application developed by Google in the fall of 2007. Google Presenter allows people from different locations to look at, comment, and work on a project. Everyone in a group can login to Google Presenter and upload a slideshow they are working on or create and start a new one. This application allows people to work from different locations and different computers without constant e-mailing back and forth. It saves presentations every time they are updated. Now this application allows PowerPoints to be uploaded. Group members of the presentation can either just "view" or "view and edit." There is also a sidebar for group members to talk about the presentation.

For students to be able to use this, they would need to have a Google account and knowledge of how to use and navigate Google Docs. They would also need to have experience with Presenter to be able to view, edit, and communicate with group members. As stated above, Presenter is an application to collaboratively work on a presentation with group members so items either uploaded or created are constantly being viewed by everyone working on the project. This application, I feel, can be used with students regarding any subject involving group projects assigned in class or outside of class. Students can use Presenter to work on group projects at home for in class projects or with other teachers/support staff and in different places in the school. Presenter can also be used for group activities assigned outside of class and each student can work from where they choose. The teacher can have a Google account to "view" the presentation and see who is doing what and also communicate/offer suggestions with the group in the sidebar option. The main idea behind Presenter is to allow groups to collaborate on a project when they can't physically be together to work on it. If a teacher decides to use Presenter with group activities, all students obviously need very good knowledge on how to use Presenter as well as reliable Internet/computer availability. Also, if a teacher chooses to use this, they need to check each groups presentation often to see if work is happening, if everyone is participating, etc.

Blogs in the Classroom

With the level of my students, I don't know about blogs in my classroom with my students but I do see them useful when it comes to communicating with parents and colleagues. It would be good with fellow colleagues when it comes to what is going on in each others classrooms to coordinate lessons/ create cross-curricular lessons. Also, to share ideas, lessons, resources, websites etc. I think a blog just for parents would be cool. Talk about assignments, give homework help, communicate regarding class activities/parties/field trips etc.

Screen Shot

Ok, I feel like a moron! I took a screen shot of my school Wiki. How to I attach it to my blog post!

My school Wiki/My Wiki

I knew my school wouldn't have a Wiki, so I made one. I just put our general information that is on our website on it. I am going to mention it to my staff at our next staff meeting and hopefully we can all add to it.

ABT Elementary Wiki: http://allysondewar.wikispaces.com/ABTElementarySchoolDearbornMi



My personal Wiki is located at http://allysondewar.wikispaces.com/

Additional considerations made when creating computer based objects for students to use independently.

Some things to consider when creating something like a StAIR or webquest:
1. Are the technology resources available to you are reliable? Students are to be able to do this independently. Are you going to have to keep running over to assist them due to tech issues?
2. Again, students are to be able to do this independently. Thus, each activity needs to be designed to specific students needs in order for that to happen. For any topic I cover in my 5th grade class, if I did a webquest or a StAIR, Id have to make 2 versions because I have 10 out of 30 in my class special ed and those ten have a reading level from K-2.
3. Does it support student thinking, critical thinking?
4. Is it time efficient?
5. Is it engaging and motivational?
6. Is the information relevant?
7. Are there specific learning objectives? An evaluation? Rubrics?

Webquests that caught my attention:

Totem Poles of the Northwest
http://www.southernct.edu/~ils6936/totem_poles/webquest.htm

Explorers Webquest
http://jleahy.com/files/webquests/explorers/index.htm

I selected these two because they were pretty cool and related to 5th grade social studies. Due to most of my students reading below grade level, social studies text is very difficult for them to read and comprehend. Thus anything to aide with that is always of interest to me.

CEP 811

Differences between web pages and blogs:

Obviously, you visit webpages and read news/information. There are usually different links to explore and in order to leave feedback you can maybe leave a comment somewhere or email someone. Blogs allow you to be a part of the news. You can respond to others news and they can respond to yours. Its not just you reading news and thats it. Its communication back and forth.