Kick Cyber Bullying
Kick Cyber Bullying teaches children about cyber bullying in an age-appropriate manner. Its intended audience is students in grades 4-6. I designed this website to help kids learn what cyber bullying is, how to recognize and deal with it, ways to prevent it, and consequences for those who bully and those who are bullied. Children can also apply their knowledge through interactive activities. The site includes text, pictures, video clips, a slide show, an interactive blog, and cartoon creation. Building this website helped me to refine my web design skills, appropriately balance multimedia and content, test a site’s usability with a variety of audiences, and incorporate user feedback into improving a site’s navigation, content, and accessibility. I used it to help my fourth grade students develop awareness about this serious topic, as well as learn specific things they can do about it.
Digital Citizenship (Online Course)
I created this online course module on digital citizenship using Blackboard’s CourseSites. This is a hybrid course, combining online and face-to-face learning formats. Students learn and apply their knowledge individually and collaboratively through multiple means, including text, video, screencasts, check-ins, discussion forums, projects, and assessments. Many processes and decisions regarding design and pedagogy went into building the module. These included comparing course management systems, drawing upon professional resources, and choosing technologies and content which would best support student learning goals. The guest username is LRGuests, and the password is 123LEARN.
Understandings and Misconceptions of Thunderstorms (Podcast)
This audio podcast explores misconceptions and prior knowledge, and how they influence a child’s learning. In this project, I use segments of an interview I conducted with two fifth graders about their understanding of thunderstorms, along with my own commentary, to demonstrate to listeners how powerful false theories can be. I then suggest a variety of strategies to identify inaccurate ideas and to promote accurate understandings while also addressing and debunking misconceptions. This project not only provided valuable educational insight, but also helped me to gain experience working with Audacity. I learned to create and edit high quality audio, produce seamless transitions, edit out errors, integrate multiple audio segments, incorporate music, and use a variety of effects to enhance an audio project.
Technology Showcase
This gallery includes a selection of pieces I created during the Master's in Educational Technology program at Michigan State University. These pieces emphasize skills I developed in using specific technologies, as well as in successfully integrating technology with content to enhance learning and accomplish educational goals. The professional skills and insights I gained during the MAET program are relevant to my practice as an educator, and extend beyond the projects showcased below. I have used the expertise I developed in a variety of situations since. I have also used many of these specific pieces to make a meaningful difference in my students’ learning.
This showcase is organized into four areas: websites, presentation tools, digital citizenship, and research. Clicking on the images will allow you to view each item.
Managing Complex Change (Prezi)
During my Technology and Leadership course, I created a Prezi presentation on managing complex change. Prezi is a tool used to create online presentations. In contrast to PowerPoint, it does not present slides in a linear fashion. Instead, it uses animation and components which are part of a bigger picture. This presentation guides an audience through five essential ingredients to achieving complex change: vision, skills, incentives, resources, and a strong action plan. These concepts are directly applicable to technology, learning, and leadership.
Fab Fourth (Blog)
I developed this fourth grade blog as part of a unit on digital citizenship and cyber safety. Children learn about a variety of situations that can arise while they are on the internet, social networking sites, online games, email, and texting. After exploring ways to keep online experiences safe and enjoyable, they apply their learning by using the blog to discuss with each other how they might respond to a variety of scenarios. Students benefit from the thoughts, ideas, and perspectives of one another. They gain experience using technology to make connections, share additional information and ideas, seek clarification, voice agreement and disagreement, and ask and answer questions. They collectively build knowledge and develop deeper understandings than they would if the learning experience were an individual one. Click Log In at the top right corner. Select Visitor from the drop-down menu. The guest password is Grade4.
Hillel Types
I created this website to help support and motivate my students to build accurate and efficient keyboarding skills. The assignment involved using technology to address an educational problem. I provided information, support, and motivation in a variety of formats. These included tips and suggestions, a student star of the week, student-led interviews with parents in various fields who rely on fluent keyboarding in their professions, polls, and a wall of fame. I also included a comment box for students to submit positive feedback about learning how to type and encouragement to their peers, which I posted in the style of a “testimonials” section. Through intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and social interaction, this website helped lead to more students consistently using the typing tutor program outside of school, applying the home row position in and out of class, and developing positive attitudes about learning to type correctly and efficiently.
Action Research: Blogging and Writing Quality (Google Doc)
In this Google Doc, I detail a research study I designed to explore the effects of educational blogging on the quality of student writing. I describe a rationale and background based on published research and personal experience, provide a literature review, and describe my plan, methods, data analysis, and evaluation. This study and proposal, if carried out, would integrate blogging with the existing writer’s workshop model of instruction at my school. The findings would have the potential to change the nature of writing instruction and make a positive impact on student writing quality.
Reading and Understanding Dialogue Boxes (PowerPoint)
This stand-alone instructional resource (STAIR) allows students to learn in a 1-on-1 setting, at their own pace. A great advantage is that it provides immediate feedback to every student, extra support to those who need it, and the ability for those who don’t to move forward more quickly. The purpose of this STAIR is to help students understand common mistakes that stem from not reading or responding appropriately to dialogue boxes. I created it using PowerPoint in a less traditional format. Students navigate through various situations in an interactive manner, using action buttons which lead to specific slides based on their individual choices. This STAIR significantly reduced the number of my students who inadvertently saved a file in the wrong place, didn’t save their work, or accidentally replaced an existing file with a blank file. To enable the functionality of the action buttons, view this project in slide show or kiosk mode.
Websites
Presentation Tools