540 Week 1

Well, the dreaded statistics has begun. I admit that I have never had a stats course, and I should not have negative feelings about this course from the beginning. So far, so good. I have a very good friend who is obsessed with stats. He is even getting his PhD in a field that allows him to use stats daily. I am not sure that I will change my profession, or start teaching stats. But, I do think that learning more about statistics will help me to better understand information that is thrown around. Or, it might just cause me to be more skeptical of numbers that are thrown around by the media!

535 Week 5

I thought that looking at other Web 2.0 tools was the most interesting assignment this week. The one that I found to be extremely interesting was the point.

It is a website that allows group action to happen once certain requirements are met. So, if 1,000,000 people sign an online petition not to work on Election Day, everyone who signed on is notified that the million mark has been reached. Then, people will know that there are nearly one million other people who agree with them, and collectively they can take action.

I think that comes at a good time. My school has had a couple of issues that have come up recently, where it has been necessary to take collective action. The first is when the superintendent pulled the musical "Chicago," due to parental concerns. There was a student petition floating around to keep the show on.

The second issue we have had is with the administration's desire to change to a block schedule. Students also organized a petition to stop this from happening. I think that using an online forum would have better help students, parents, and community members to organize!

535 Week 4

I spent a chunk of time this week setting up a Ning for my Junior/Senior Sociology class. This course is heavy on discussion, but some students are so reluctant to participate. So, I thought that allowing them to type answers to my questions would increase participation. Many of my students are familiar with Moodle, but I think that the Ning I created is going to be a little more user friendly for my students. I introduced it to my students during class on Friday, and they seemed interested. A few of them even mentioned how "cool" it was. Lately, I feel as though it is taking quite a bit for me to impress them in their time of early onset senioritis, so I think a few "cools" is about as good as it is going to get! It will be interesting to see how the Ning is further able to engage some of my disengaged students!

535 Week 3

After a crazy weekend away at a friend's wedding out of state, I have finally begun my homework. I think that the most exciting assignment this week was to compile a list of blogs that we wanted to follow. I found some blogs that look really interesting, and I am excited to look through them in the future. I am still undecided about the creative commons assignment. I do post pictures to picassa or facebook as a way of sharing them with friends. Most of my pictures are of people, so I have never delved into the world of getting my own creative commons license. However, I am excited at the thought of creating a ning for my classes. I have used a wiki in the past, so I am looking forward to trying something different!

535 Week 2

The most interesting assignment this week was reading up on microblogging. I do have a facebook account, but I have held off on signing up for Twitter for some time now. I do update my status on facebook a couple of times a week, but sometimes I wonder about those who must update theirs multiple times a day. This became a problem for me when a "friend" from high school, someone I had not talked to in nearly a decade, befriended me. I was fine with being her facebook friend, but she updates her status ten times a day. We barely spoke after freshman year in high school, and frankly, I am not concerned about what shows she is watching on television.

So, I decided that I was not someone who was going to Tweet. Honestly, my life is not so interesting that my friends need to know about the awesome dinner I just made. And, when it does get intersting, I update my facebook status! At this point, I don't see a need for me to microblog, either personally or professionally. Perhaps I will change my mind by the time this course is over.

535 Week 1

The assignments this week involved blogging. I read about blogging, I compared blog hosting sites, and now it is time for me to blog about blogging. I am a very long winded person in real life, and I have been known to ramble. This is the first blog that I have ever written, and I really have no desire for others to read about the thoughts which spin through my head. I do write in a journal, to clear my head, and get thoughts down on paper, but, I would never share those writings with anyone. So, the idea of blogging in my classroom forces me to rethink purposes of blogging, as well as the different forms it could take on.

A teacher who I taught with for five years at the middle school has her students keep a blog about what is happening in their orchestra class. She has a small group of them update the blog, and then parents can read about what is happening in the class. I have thought about having my students keep a blog, so that we can keep their parents updated as to what is going on in class. Now that I am teaching high school, my students rarely talk to their parents any more. And, the parents want information! So, a student blog, moderated by me, would be a great way to give them ownership of something in the room, and not give me too much more work!

530 Week 5

The two assignments this week were to create a rubric and to complete the pecha kucha. I have created rubrics in the past, and I usually have multiple revisions before I am satisfied with what I produce. I think the reason is that I know how much easier things are going to be to grade with a great rubric. A well-laid out rubric takes so much subjectivity out of grading. Objectivity can be wonderful. But, sometimes I wish I took the time to grade a few, tweak the rubric, and then re-grade those that I have graded. Because the material that I am teaching this year is new to me, I often find myself dissatisified with the former teacher's rubrics. I think they are great, until I start grading with them. It is only at that point that I see how much better they could have been. Then, I end up wanting to change the rubric on my students at the last minute. However, I am not sure that this would be fair, even if the new rubric is far better than the old one!

The second assignment was the Pecha Kucha. I think that creating a presentation that is 20 slides long, and speaking for 20 seconds a slide is a great way to keep from rambling on and on about whatever it is one is presenting. However, I think that it is also very limiting. Well, perhaps I won't see it as so limiting if I were better at putting together presentations. But, it was really difficult to decide what made the cut, and how I could condense what I had down to exactly 20 different slides. So, while Pecha Kucha was in intersting assignment, I am unsure that I would use the idea in my classroom in the future.