Lesson Four

Link to my powerpoint.

If you have created a presentation for the classroom, describe your experience. Is there anything you would change? Is there anything you found particularly effective?

When creating my powerpoint presentation, I was browsing online for examples that might help me with a middle school social studies lesson. "Why re-invent the wheel," right? So, not wanting to start totally from scratch, I found a really great website called PPST.com. Essentially, there were loads of powerpoints to get ideas from. In the end, I decided to adapt a powerpoint from a lady named Liz Wernig at Mendon-Upton. I know what you might be thinking, but you would be wrong--there was some "lifting" but mostly I had to rework huge portions of the 37 slide presentation. There were lots of problems I encountered with the previous material. First of all, it was a little dated. The links that she had were typed out and not hyperlinked. Also, the slides had an odd chronological arrangement. They started with an introduction, went to Lady Liberty, back to steerage, then some activities, then back to Liberty, and so on. The media that was used wasn't as engaging as I wanted. There were several videos snippets on the History Channel that were just too good not to be included in any powerpoint about Ellis Island. All of the factual information was correct, though. Also, I had to insert my own activities, keeping only one that was based on an Excel graph. I can't use that one this year, as there were no instructions and I'm still learning to use Excel to enter data and create graphs. So, after adding some awesome SchoolHouse Rock, about 5 updated video clips, and two activities, I feel like this is practically mine from scratch. Also, I wasn't happy with the background colors, transitions, etc, so I changed them. With all this in place, I was ready to use it in the classroom!

The presentation was a hit with my high school test group (which is the level I teach this year). They completely fell in love with the Schoolhouse Rock video and begged to watch more of them at the end of the day. Also, they liked the Statue of Liberty deconstruction. It was fast-paced and had great music. The videos from the History Channel had real people the kids could identify with. The students were surprised at the size of Lady Liberty and impressed with the splendor of the Great Hall on Ellis Island. They didn't get to do many of the activities, but they did want to watch the live webcam and unfortunately, it was down. Later in the week I plan to let them do the webquests, interaction with the Wall of Honor, and take the practice citizenship tests. Overall, this was a great experience. I've used powerpoints in the classroom before, but definitely not any with so many interactive opportunities. Now, I'm off to embed some music!

Ellis Island Video — History.com

While making my powerpoint for class, I stumbled across this:
Ellis Island Video — History.com

Watch it, it's fabulous!

Lesson Three

Currently, the communication our program most uses between parents and staff is the Weekly Progress Report. This note home is standardized and quite confusing for parents. I think what makes it most confusing is the amount of information it tries to cover. The parent comment section has only been used about 10 times in the past three years, in my experience. While knowing your child's learning style is important, it may not matter if you don't know what a learning style is to begin with.





If I were redesigning our communication, I would make it more user friendly by simplifying the boxed areas. Parents should be able to understand, in a simple manner, what their student is doing through the week. The behavior section would be redesigned to simply tell what infraction the student lost points for instead of organizing it by hours of the day. If a student only loses one point for sleeping for an hour, then that is what they will do--sleep for that entire time. My new progress reports would also be visually pleasing by using white space and the Corbin Redhound graphic.

Lesson Two

While one might think that databases and spreadsheets are only applicable in the math classroom, that is not the case. Teachers can use spreadsheets in a variety of ways. An online search can provide a plethora of ideas for every imaginable subject area from social studies to language arts. Of course, not every activity encountered on the internet is a valid use of databases or spreadsheets. I was surprised to find that some social studies activities that claimed to be "spreadsheets" were simply charts with information entered into them that had no comparative or numerical data. On the opposite end, more toward the "good" spectrum, was an activity I found on analyzing birth rates, found here. This site features a social studies spreadsheet used correctly.

At the Center for Technology and Teaching website the birth rate lesson plan walks the students through entering data step by step using Excel software. The steps indicate the website from which the data can be found, how to enter it into columns and how values can be entered as percents. Not only does it explain these basics, but shows how to take the data and display it graphically as a scatter plot, followed by opportunities to make predictions for the future. Extensions are also available for students who may need additional challenge. I look forward to using this lesson in my classroom!

Upon reflection, I have discovered that I often use databases as an educator--though not those of my own design. Our gradebook program, Infinite Campus, is a highly useful database search-able by many functions. In addition to the gradebook, I also use the reports generated by Teenbiz to compare and analyze student achievement. Reports deliver weekly information about progress toward state standards, improvement over time on multiple choice activities, and periodic measurement using the summative levelset. In addition, the database predicts how students will fare on the KCCT assessment. Contrary to my former belief that I don't use databases in my classroom, I actually use them on a daily basis. For the future, I look forward to designing some engaging activities that students can use!

-Lesson One

I was just considering that there is really no excuse for me not to know how to use databases and spreadsheets. While making an action plan for graduate class, I discovered that there are loads of online tutorials to help me improve these skills. I use OpenOffice (a great FREE program) because it is completely compatible with Microsoft Office--which is so -not- free. OpenOffice has a great set of helpful tutorials found here. I actually am quite motivated to learn something new to use in my classroom!

Testingmy blog. The purpose of these comments will be professional reflection related to my master's class--educational technolgy.