Danielle+Price

Danielle Price's Learning​ ISTE NETS-T thoughts and learning: 2. ** Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and ** Assessments


 * Teachers should be including technology more into their curriculum and be assessing students using more technological assessments and web tools.
 * Use digital tools and resources to help feed creativity among students.
 * Use technology as a differentiation piece to help meet students needs
 * Create technology enriched enviornments to help students monitor their own goals, progress and set goals for further learning.

What is one area from today that you feel confident about?
 * Journal Entry Tuesday, July 20, 2010 **
 * I am very confident in my ability to play with the wiki and set it up. I feel as though this is going to be a tool that will save me and my team. I am hoping that by setting up a wiki with lots of information for parents that we will also help reduce the copy budget because we won't have to print 5 or 6 copies off for kids; furthermore I believe that this will be a more "green way of communication as well because the parents can email us the forms back instead of hoping they don't get lost by the child. I know that this might not work for every parent or be valued by all of the parents, but I fully believe that this will be extremly beneficial for the vast majority of our parents (it's just the nature of the beast at my school). I would like to keep information posted for the 7th grade team as well if they feel this is beneficial and help the 8th grade team get one up and running if possible (I know they will //need// something like this wiki for sanity purposes). I am nervous about the time commitment but I am confident that just like everything else this will get easier and faster as time goes on as well. **

What is one area brought up today that you feel challenged by (in a positive way)? **I am still feeling challenged in how to incoporate the technology more into my lessons. I think that understanding the wiki and my project will help tremendously for communication with parents and open a whole new door of opportunities, but I am still nervous and challenged with how to better incorportate the technology into daily lessons.**

**Final Project Thoughts :** **I would like to build a wiki for communication home that includes planning calanders, and resources I have for parents. The wiki would also include copies of worksheets or assesmnts we will be taking so that they have access to it at home as well if a student is absent. This will help to make sure students have the opportunity to complete the assignment and bring it back to school or email it in to me.**

Wednesday July 21, 2010 Karl Fisch has a lot of great stuff to look at.

Good sites to post for middle schoolers: [] []

Good resources to put on my website [] --- Look for Homework help and math specifically.

I will take away from this information and resources to pass onto my students and fellow teachers in my building in order to help our students become safer.

​ This website has a lot of information for parents/guardians, educators, law enforcement, teens, and kids. The information is constistant for each category, but it is age appropriate. There are videos to show and discuss, activitiy cards to use to review the information and there is information on cyberbullying, resources for help (again age appropriate) and FAQs. For educators there is an option to have people come out and do demonstrations and lessons for students about internet safty and to show students there are real and potential dangers.There are real stories posted and lesson around them so that kids can real understand the danger of bullying and what happens to the person being bullied.
 * Internet safty for kids:** [|NetSmartz] [|http://www.netsmartz.org]

Journal Entry Wednesday July 21, 2010
 * I worked on the NetSmartz website. It was nice to see all of the information and vidoes for students at all grade levels and adults. the lessons were wonderful and the activites were free. I don't use the internet a lot with my students, but I feel as though as I try to integrate this more into my lessons that I can use these sites tohelp teach the safty part before we begin our research. I feel that there is a lot of information here to share with my students about cyberbullying and safty when they come to me and share their internet lives with me. These are great resources that will be nice to have in my "tool kit" and turn to when I don't know what exactly to do. I would like to share these resources with my administration and technology teachers in our building and see if they would be interested in sharing them with the faculty and doing a PD early in the year on this information. Our district tries to use strong filters to keep the "junk out" and our kids have to sign contracts before using the computers, I don't know that this is always safe, especially when they go home. These sites would be beneficial for teaching all of our students again. What stood out to me the most from the internet safty lessons today is that there is a TON of resources out there and we just need to figure out how and when to best use them appropriatly with our students.

Thursday, July 22, 2010
For my project I decided to create a wiki space for my class. I will use this site to post planning calanders, letters to parents, worksheets and assesments from class. I will not post final assessments until they have been given for valitiy purposes. This space will give parents an opportunity to check upcoming tasks if their student will be absent or if their student is falling behind. Posting the resources on the web will also allow students to download the materials. complete them at home and email them in. I will be very happy and excited to accept homework via email, especially for my students who have organizational issues. I am hoping that I will be able to post things for my 7th grade team as well that need to be accessed by all parents, and then have the teachers give the site name to their parents so they can check for updates. I have chosen to do this because I know some of my team mates are scared of change and technology, so I will help to lead them in the correct direction through this process.

Here is a link to my project. This is just a draft and once I have access to all of the materials for the fall and my full schedule, I will be able to update the site. http://mspricemerrill.wikispaces.com/ On the site you will notice that I have created a page for each of my classes. I am hoping to do this to help differentiate my instruction as each class will have its own needs. This scares with me time issues and taking a full course load myself this fall to work towards completion of my masters, but I think it will flow easily and once I get the hang this will be wonderful. As part of my learning process I have asked some previous, supportive parents that I had built a relationship with to look at the site and give me feedback. I am still waiting to hear from them, but I hope that they will be able to provide me with more information on what would help make the site better. I know it needs improvement and I am hoping they can tell me what else they would like to see posted. I am looking forward to hearning from them and making the necessasry changes to help benefit families and students this year. I am also hoping to move forward and sending the feedback to the 8th grade team in order to help these parents with their 8th grade students (because they were so generous to help me out as well). Here is the Lesson plan for incorporation technology into my classroom.

Friday July 23, 2010
//__ **Journal Entry:** __// This course has helped me learn a new way to help out the parents and families of my students open up a better form of communication and insite into what their children are learning. The technology will help families keep in contact and keep their student on pace and caught up in their work (or at least this is my goal). While that was my project and my main focus, I have been exploring the other sites and tools as well and thinking of how I can incorporate them into projects and lessons within my classroom. I am excited to try some of the other sites with students as well. I think this will help be the differentiation tool parents are looking for. I love the idea for voice thread for presentations (this might help our students become less fearful of presentations in class as this is a skill they may need in the work force someday...maybe not with the advances in technology, who knows?!?!?!) and I would like to offer this as an option for my students. There are videos on their of math strategies, and I can thing of many units within our curriculum in which students could create videos on the strategies and uses of the concepts. I think this would help the differentation of honors classes as well that parents are looking for. I am really trying to solve my planning issues here, create new ideas and satisfy parents/gaurdians and administrators all while having fun with the kids as well.

I also like idea of [|http://www.animoto.com] or [|http://www.vuvox.com] for presentations. I believe students can take pictures of their work and present it here as well. All of these ideas will help me professionally incorporate technology (which for the most part I am very comfortable with and like) into a classroom where I have been struggeling so much!

The only thing I would have liked better in this course is if I could have had a chance to work more on the document camera and how to better use this in my class as well. I have one now that belongs to the school but I really want to learn how to better use it and all the workings of this camera and it's benefits for my students. Other then that, this was an awesome class, and I have learned a lot and become more inspired for the fall. I am ready to work on incorporating more technology into my classroom! Here's to new adventures this upcoming and very busy year!

Thank you for this opportunity! Danielle