Personal Learning Summary from Su

I’ve harvested a lot from EME5050 this semester, which mixes theory and practice together, leading us to a completely new world of utilizing technologies in the classroom. Weekly peer discussion provides us a platform for communication with the educators to share their tech-teaching experience and exchange the updating expression to the new educational applications or knowledge. It’s a painful but enjoyable process to integrate all what we’ve learned through the entire semester to build a wiki. Searching and evaluating the suitable and useful educational websites and software costs time but benefit a lot to our students. I’m so excited to learn how to sequence the images into the timeline of the video editor, add special effects, transitions, the narrative track and the background music with MovieMaker, Camtasia and Cyberlink Power Director to create the movie. I’ve gained the feeling of the achievement whenever I imagined the scene my students create their own digital story following the rubric and instruction on the curriculum page and the links to the related websites with numerous useful resources, comment on each other’s work. Besides, students also realize the importance of the copyright when they import the images and audios into their movies. Teachers and our students learn from each other and grow up together through this process.

There is still a lot I need to improve in the future as a digital educator. I can’t download the contents of the powerpoint from the sideshare directly; I got confused when I select the proper criteria and how scoring matches the grading scales to design the rubric.

After completing EME 5050, I will keep updating my blog in the future and hope my students can benefit more from it in the future and put more I learned in this course into my future class and urge on the academician my study with more new educational tool.

Final Project From Su

Here is my final project on wiki, including homepage, curriculum page, lesson plan, example and rubric. Hope you enjoy it and thanks for reading it.

Su

Rubric reflection from Su

A rubric is” a detailed scoring guide for assessment, based on stated criteria” (Shelly, Gunter, & Gunter, p. 396). A rubric is a guide for students and teachers, clarifying the criteria on which students’ work will be judged. A rubric helps teachers grade accurately, fairly and reliably. Teachers can increase the quality of the instruction by providing focus, emphasis, and attention to particular details to direct student learning. Rubrics can reduce the time spent grading by reducing uncertainty. Students are able to self-assess their own work prior to submitting it and improve performance. When assignments are scored and returned with the rubric, students can easily recognize the strengths and weaknesses of their work. On the other hand, there are also some disadvantages using a rubric. Rubrics may limit imagination if students feel compelled to complete the assignment strictly as outlined in the rubric instead of taking the initiative to explore their learning. Rubrics let students become test mastery rather than skill mastery. If the criteria of the rubric are too complex, it could lead to anxiety.

This week I created an analytic rubric for my digital storytelling project using iRubric. The iRubric is user friendly and easy to add, delete, and move criteria. First I wrote down all of the things that I felt were important and chose the most important ones as the categories, such as: theme, sequence, images, soundtrack, storyboard and collaboration. I had 6 criteria and 4 levels for each criteria, excellent, good, fair and poor. Please take a look at my rubric below and feel free to add any comment. Because this project is designed to develop students the creativity, I emphasize originality and creativity. Storyboard is important for planning the story so I add the storyboard as one of the criteria. I think that the hardest part of creating a rubric is to make the descriptions are specific, understandable and easy to follow. Even tough the rubric is time-consuming, it’s really worthy designing it.
Please take a look at my rubric and feel free to add any comment. Thanks.

References:

Mueller, J. (2010). Authentic Assessment Toolbox: Rubrics. Retrieved April 10, 2010 from http://jonathan.mueller.faculty.noctrl.edu/toolbox/rubrics.htm#versus

Shelly, G., Gunter, G., & Gunter, R. (2010). Integrating Technology and Classroom Media in the Classroom. Boston: Course Technology.

Su

Evaluate Educational Technology, Just Do IT

There is no doubt that the most often stated primary goal of evaluating instructional software and website is to determine if it can be used effectively. We can ask help from school district, state Department of Education, professional educational organization, hardware and software catalogs, recommendations of colleagues, published evaluations, and technology conferences.

With a growing abundance of educational software and massive amounts of information accessible via the Internet, teachers face difficult selection decisions. Therefore, the ability to critically evaluate information is an invaluable skill for the educators. Evaluation of the learning process is recognized by its dependence on checklists, a rating scale or a rubric. Almost all of the software evaluation contains a considerable number of items concerning the content of the program, the presence and quality of documentation, the technical support, the ability level and assessment, technical quality and its ease of use and reliability of operation. Evaluation techniques might also include detailed observation of student use.

We are reminded of important criteria including “authority, affiliation, purpose and object, content and learning process, audience and currency, and design” (Shelly, Gunter, & Gunter, 2010)while evaluating web resources. When evaluating software applications for the digital story telling, I downloaded a free trial of Cyberlink PwerDirector 8 from the company website http://www.cyberlink.com/products/powerdirector/overview_en_US.html for 30 days to determine its suitability for the curriculum. However I met some problems while evaluating the educational websites with the rubrics in anther course. It is often difficult to ascertain whether a particular site is a purely commercial venture or a purely educational venture. In fact, it may be the case that no site fits the latter extreme. Again, since many Web sites are produced by unfamiliar sources, we must look deeper to uncover the bias of online educational products. In addition, the information on Web sites is not static. Information can be updated any time, new information can be added, and old information can be removed. Sometimes the new information doesn’t fit the content of my curriculum page at all.

The effect of technology integration is sometimes limited to the funding budget, my group member Turki and I submitted a grant proposal for the smartboard purchase of the educational department of UCF, hoping to change a little bit the current environment lacking of educational equipments.

As a 21st century teacher we not only need to know how to integrate the use of technology into the curriculum but also evaluate the educational technology.

Reference
Shelly, G., Gunter, G., & Gunter, R. (2010). Integrating Technology and Classroom Media in the Classroom. Boston: Course Technology.

Wiki Gives Kids a New World

Wiki curriculum pages act like an online electronic whiteboard, providing students access to change or add information and are a collaborative, constructivist approach to incorporate technology into lessons. The responsibility of contributing to a Wiki teaches students necessary skills to interact within a group successfully, engages student interest and gives them a feeling of accomplishment. A list of websites that provided appropriate information related to subject content is centrally located, eliminating the need for maintenance of a separate website. It breaks with the traditional learning model of an instructor-centered classroom and puts the learner in control. Through checking post homework, course materials, videos, screencasts, wiki also gives parents a chance to be a part of the classroom. Students with access to the Internet outside of school can complete projects without having to be in school. Wikis can be used for brainstorming, authentic assessment, literature discussion, journalism, collaborative writing and research papers.

Following the WebQuest Template, my wiki includes five parts: introduction, task, process, evaluation, and conclusion. For “changing an ending to a novel” project, I will post the novel list for my 12th grade students to choose. To introduce the novels, I have some clips of the movie based on the novels. One video made by myself is an example before my students start their own movies. I can become “the facilitator by offering suggestions and asking probing questions to make students inquire deeper into the concepts, by keeping them on task, and by teaching them to construct their learning through problem solving and discovery” (Shelly 2010). Tutorials and hyperlinks to how-to web sites assist in teaching editing movies step by step. The process of searching the websites is really time-consuming for me, but worthy saving students’ valuable time. Students are divided into groups to draft their storyboard, post and review their final work facing the real audience, comment on the works of other groups. By creating the decision tree, every group member can add his or her opinion and decide what will happen next. Grading rubric at the end provides the rules how the final work will be graded.

Making the wiki page more visually appealing was the hardest part for me. I always messed up while keeping images, videos, and links in the exact place. There is little doubt that opening the door to a level of group interaction, wiki is a valid tool to be used for students. I intend to further explore the effective strategies for educators with wiki.

References:
Shelly, G., Gunter, G., & Gunter, R. (2010). Integrating technology and classroom media in the classroom. Boston

Su

Digital Storytelling from Su

Digital Storytelling is really a useful tool for both of learning and teaching. I'm not too familiar with it now, I will try my best to learn it, grasp the skills of it as soon as possible and use it in the future. It's also a big chanllenge for me. Here is my slideshow of digital storytelling.

Resources:

Shelly, G. B., Gunter, G. A., & Gunter, R. E. (2010). Teachers discovering computers Integrating Technology and Digital Media in the Classroom, sixth edition.Boston: Cengage Learning.

Personal Learning Plan from Su

Throughout this first half semester, I learned abundant unfamiliar knowledge such as the ways of integrating the Internet and World Wide Web into classroom, the use of the search engine and the application of the security and educational software. I gained the feeling of fulfillment especially after working with the Microsoft Excel. Course EME 5050 guilds me to a brand new world of integrating technology in the classroom. Below are my specific methods:

●Grammatical issues is the most big problem for me, I bought the book Understanding and Using English Grammar, read it and practice every day to make great effort for improvement.

●Before learning EME 5050, I seldom used blogs, twitter and wikis. Except completing the assignment blogs, I should update my blog frequently and share more latest educational news and information with other teachers, students and parents. Wiki is so cool, free to create, edit and modify, I never checked wiki discussion and history before. I decide to create my Wiki for exchange of opinions and ideas and communication with global educators.

●After observing my little nephew’s use of the educational software called The New Way Things Work, I realized that “three-dimensional (3-D) images” makes the boring instruction vivid and interesting and strength kid’s memory. So I have a had a plan to make “three-dimensional (3-D) images” lesson plan, though I know that it will be difficult and tough for me.

●These days, I’m creating a video high school book trailer with Movie Maker, I really enjoy the feeling as a director and editor. I’m also learning the multimedia educational software geo-sketch pads and Camtasia Studio software. I hope to master more skills of educational soft wares.
I’m ready to review my study every week to look for the improvement and feedback.

Not only learning from textbooks, websites and professors, I will also learn from other class mates and students. Learning is a time-consuming process, constant dropping will wear away a stone, I will study during the left half semester with more vigor, enthusiasm and patience.