Thursday, May 21, 2015
Sites and making a website.
https://sites.google.com/site/thewaysofenglish/
Making a website was really fun and challenging!! I really enjoyed the ability to look around the site and see the format that they had as the example and it really gave me some good ideas on how I could make my own site for my students. I did struggle to figure out how to upload hyperlinks and pictures but after some time I eventually figured it out. The site makes it really nice to just type in the site or image URL and it takes it from there. I really enjoyed the versatility that the site allows in the style of the format you can choose. The format style that I chose was the horizontal tab option. I felt like this was easier to navigate for most students or new viewers of the site. The horizontal tab gives a good impression of what the site has too offer and quick links to any interests within the site. Being in the digital age and having students access the internet a lot, we should not expect them to have a huge attention span. This is why I favor this particular link configuration, it is quick and easy to navigate.
I really liked the revision notes. At first I did not know what to think of it or how it could be useful for me, but I realized that it was good to take a look at those because it let me know where and what I was trying to do. If I ever want to go back and wonder why did I do that or go back because I forgot I can. The revision history is a really great tool to have for organizing and revisiting lost ideas.
Basics for Education
Pages V.S Word
I must admit that I have never used pages before, but have found a new way to write documents. I thought that I had to be a slave to word, but I have now noticed some great things about Pages and some not so great things. Let me share some similarities between these two programs.
Word and Pages allows you to make some complex text documents and gives you a lot of variations to work with from font to layout. Both Word and Pages allows you spell check, which is really helpful in a pinch because I think most of us know how to spell, but when we type it is easy to press the wrong keys. Both products cannot really support each others systems, when you try and open one document in another format, which they say you can, it is dreadful, and many of the fonts are not even supported. This is no trivial matter but both Pages and Word have similar ways to start a document, there is no confusing way to open a document thankfully between these two programs and both have a decent choice for templates.
One thing that I found interesting was the difference in how each program saves. When you create a file in Pages in is saved by default in the pages folder. Every change you make is changed and saved to the icloud online and you can access that document at anytime through your icloud from any device. Word can do just about all this also but with more work it does not save automatically for you causing a heart attack if you are working on something and the power goes out., but with one major difference. With word you can save into a file which makes organizing a variety of different things you are making easier to find, but with pages you cannot do this causing some hassle if you keep a lot of documents.
Pages and Word both offer the ability to work online collaboratively, . Both these programs allows people to look at the document and make changes, but both have some annoying differences. Word only offers their sharing ability on its premium services, which means that if you want to share your document you will have to pay the monthly fee. Additionally, though word does offer auto save now, you cannot auto save while sharing your file, you have to go back to save it, then re-share it. Pages also has a similar downside in that you can only share your documents with the iCloud version of pages.So you can share a document from your iPad, but the other person has to be using Pages for iCloud on OS X
When you take a look at the ability of the iPad and how it interacts with its users, it is fairly easy to see why pages acts in the manner it does with its auto saving features, working collaterally among other options. It also makes sense that pages would have less options or templates because the idea is that people will be on an iPad and would be looking to throw to together a rough draft or quick idea rather than having 3-4 hours to sit down and make something.
iMapping
As an English teacher, I love the mapping application. It really brings the idea of brain storming and ideas to life when preparing information to use in papers. I like how simple it is to use it and the feeling of being a part of your ideas, a part of your creation a little bit more than just a pencil and paper. Kids respond to colors and graphics a lot more than they previously did because of the way the world has changed, and this helps keep them on track. Another way that I like this app is how you could use it for sentence diagramming. In English, sentence diagramming can be one of the most frustrating and boring things, this will allow students to diagram with creativity and style, keeping this portion of English a little less stale.
Safari and Rover
When Mac first came out and everyone was using it,i was against safari web browser, the only real reason I was against it was because if its unfamiliarity. Once I took the plunge and got an iPhone, I loved the safari browser, would I say its better than chrome? No I wouldn't, but I would say its worse than Google Chrome, I label them even at this point for web browsers.
Rover is a great start to help students and the dangers online activity can bring. We all know someone and or have experienced going to the wrong site with inappropriate content. It is important to help give students a way to explore the vast array of knowledge with minimal risk. Certainly this application does not stop students from just the bad stuff, but also from things that would distract them. It keeps them from gaming sites and others sites that might keep them from the school task at hand. I think Rover is going the right direction with its application and is looking good with asking teachers and other people in the classroom to help get it right.
Box Account
https://app.box.com/files
One thing that I found interesting was the difference in how each program saves. When you create a file in Pages in is saved by default in the pages folder. Every change you make is changed and saved to the icloud online and you can access that document at anytime through your icloud from any device. Word can do just about all this also but with more work it does not save automatically for you causing a heart attack if you are working on something and the power goes out., but with one major difference. With word you can save into a file which makes organizing a variety of different things you are making easier to find, but with pages you cannot do this causing some hassle if you keep a lot of documents.
Pages and Word both offer the ability to work online collaboratively, . Both these programs allows people to look at the document and make changes, but both have some annoying differences. Word only offers their sharing ability on its premium services, which means that if you want to share your document you will have to pay the monthly fee. Additionally, though word does offer auto save now, you cannot auto save while sharing your file, you have to go back to save it, then re-share it. Pages also has a similar downside in that you can only share your documents with the iCloud version of pages.So you can share a document from your iPad, but the other person has to be using Pages for iCloud on OS X
When you take a look at the ability of the iPad and how it interacts with its users, it is fairly easy to see why pages acts in the manner it does with its auto saving features, working collaterally among other options. It also makes sense that pages would have less options or templates because the idea is that people will be on an iPad and would be looking to throw to together a rough draft or quick idea rather than having 3-4 hours to sit down and make something.
iMapping
As an English teacher, I love the mapping application. It really brings the idea of brain storming and ideas to life when preparing information to use in papers. I like how simple it is to use it and the feeling of being a part of your ideas, a part of your creation a little bit more than just a pencil and paper. Kids respond to colors and graphics a lot more than they previously did because of the way the world has changed, and this helps keep them on track. Another way that I like this app is how you could use it for sentence diagramming. In English, sentence diagramming can be one of the most frustrating and boring things, this will allow students to diagram with creativity and style, keeping this portion of English a little less stale.
Safari and Rover
When Mac first came out and everyone was using it,i was against safari web browser, the only real reason I was against it was because if its unfamiliarity. Once I took the plunge and got an iPhone, I loved the safari browser, would I say its better than chrome? No I wouldn't, but I would say its worse than Google Chrome, I label them even at this point for web browsers.
Rover is a great start to help students and the dangers online activity can bring. We all know someone and or have experienced going to the wrong site with inappropriate content. It is important to help give students a way to explore the vast array of knowledge with minimal risk. Certainly this application does not stop students from just the bad stuff, but also from things that would distract them. It keeps them from gaming sites and others sites that might keep them from the school task at hand. I think Rover is going the right direction with its application and is looking good with asking teachers and other people in the classroom to help get it right.
Box Account
https://app.box.com/files
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
IPAD DISCIPLINES-ESOL
iTRANSLATE
This has to be one of the most fun apps I have used in a while. One of the fun things about this app is that it translates on the spot and can come in handy for teachers who have students that they cannot communicate with very well. I believe that teaching English should take more of an immersion effect and though this app is extremely useful, should only be used in extreme circumstances of confusion and ambiguity. This app will also help save some time on simple words that might otherwise take a while to describe. This app also is in question with some of its translations.
Under the evaluation of English top Japanese translations, it was difficult at times to get the fully accurate statement or translation within that statement. If you say simple words or phrases, then it will translate with a high percentage of accuracy, but if you say a combination of words that is very odd, such as " This food is legit" it will not translate this accurately which would be "This food is amazing"
SPELLBOARD
Spellboard is a great app to use with English or ELL students because it makes spelling and other English activities easier to access and use. One great thing about this application is the way the quizzes are set up. Not only can teachers see the progress of their students and which words they have been studying more than others, but they can instantly see the scores of their students tests. For students this is a great application because when they take a test they have to implement three different modes of learning, listening to the word, then spelling the word and typing the word out. After the student does this, they are told instantly if the word is correct or not. One thing that teachers can implement using this application is sending the quiz results to their parents. Additionally, teachers or parents that want to send take home quizzes or homework can easily send it to an email or other ipad device allowing students to access that information for later use. I cannot wait to try and implement this particular application.
SENTENCE BUILDER
This is a great application for class enhancement or student skills review. This app not only has you build sentences, but it has you listening to the different combinations using a set number of words and the student has to match the words at the top to the bottom which corresponds to what was said. This is a great application to use while the teacher is doing something else or as an enhancement activity for students. Another neat feature that this app has is the ability to create your own sentence combinations by adding a picture and writing in the corresponding sentences. You can additionally record the sentences making for a wide range of different sentences both in difficulty and variation. I can see this application being great for different tenses and bringing those to life on the page. I would love to have an opportunity to use this application in the classroom.
Drawings
Using the Drawings from google is some what similar to paint from Microsoft with some small variations. I did not see where you could insert an image into paint. I also found the interface was harder to navigate with windows paint. I had actually never used drawings before, but found it very easy to use. There was not anything that I was confused on how to use or where to find what I was looking for. I did try to put together the tanagram square which I did find a little difficult in how to manipulate the shapes in the way I needed to get the square to come out correctly. The lessons teaching how to use google drawings were informative and showed some things, I did not know how to do.
I took a look at the middle school lesson plan and found the lesson plan to be very well done. I really enjoyed the video, because at first glance learning about tanagram might be boring or unexciting, but the story really brings it to life and helps the students understand what is going on. It is important for the students to grasp what this particular lesson is trying to convey and this particular lesson I believe does well to captivate the students leading into the work.
Graphic organizers
Common Core wants to set standards that help students achieve and are prepared for the future and that might just mean college. With drawings you can organize your thoughts which is very important when writing. Being able to organize your thoughts or ideas to later write a paper for H.S and college is an imperative skill to have. Google drawings will also help classes move toward a paperless classroom. With using google drawings to organize, students and teachers can seamlessly share their thoughts and ideas online for the teacher to look at quickly between students and make corrections if needed is very efficient.
Math Concepts
We all know that Math is a subject that is important to learn for all ages and can be applied in various ways throughout our world. One way that Google drawings can help both achieve the Common Core standards and helps students manipulate and understand various shapes is by using Google drawings. A geometry class can simply set up a number of different shapes and allow the students to move them all around and change the degrees and describe to the teacher what is going on or what degree they are changing it too.
Flow Charts
Creating flowcharts in science and math is a great way to take the information of processes and make it graphically appealing. This is a great differentiation tool for students. Have students use Google Drawings to take a complex set of steps and make a flowchart. For example, students studying the scientific method could create a custom graphic organizer outlining the steps. There is no doubt that Common Core standards describe that understanding charts and graphs is an important part of students growth in presenting information.
Graham, Michael J. (2013-04-23). Google Apps Meets Common Core (p. 132). SAGE Publications. Kindle Edition.
Sunday, May 17, 2015
Self Grading Quiz
Certainly as future teachers we do not have to be told how much time you have to consume creating lesson plans and grading papers. Having the ability to create a self-grading quiz or test is something that should be used in every teachers arsenal if they have the option to do so. This tool will allow teachers to save a lot of time and effort, so that they can concentrate and focus on the lecture portion or other important parts of the lesson. If you really think about a quiz or test, it really is not that important of a part of your class, sure it's important for grades, or evaluations, but in reality it's your ability to transfer the information that you teach that allows them to do well on the test. Taking a test and how you teach your lesson is not always directly related, but what if a teacher had an extra hour to prepare for their lecture? What if teachers had more time to create or research games for their class instead of using that time grading quizzes? Below you will see my practice quiz, which I encourage you to check out. Certainly the one drawback for some teachers is the willingness or ability to use multiple choice answers or the type of questions they can ask. I encourage everyone to use google forms. Google forms has about seven different types of questions you can ask among them, multiple choice,short answer, text etc. Google forms also allows you to give hints to the question if needed to assist students on those harder questions.
Using google forms also allows for you to evaluate student performance based off different styles of presenting your lessons. Every student learns differently, but what google forms allows you to do is quickly evaluate students knowledge of the information and relate it back to how you taught your lesson. You can compare students results to the different approaches you take and be able to evaluate which approaches best works for your class. Additionally, with using google forms you can send quiz results directly to parents if they want to know how there kids are performing on a weekly bases. We all know that kids all try and hide there grades from time to time and this might be a good way to keep some parents in the loop. I would warn also though that parents knowing every grade or quiz score might impede the student from their ability to do better without parent involvement. Every child has to overcome a poor score on their own and learn to work harder, with added pressure because parents might know every grade might impede the student. Close evaluation must be taken with each student and how they react.
Below is a great HOW TO video of google forms.
Google Forms is also not a very difficult program to use, it does take a little bit to figure out where the embed code is and to figure out the layout of questions and background you might like. After the first 15 minutes of getting comfortable with where everything is it became very easy to create my own forms and self-grading quizzes.
In chapter 7 of graham.
4. Present information, findings, and supporting evidence such that listeners can follow the line of reasoning and the organization, development, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
5. Make strategic use of digital media and visual displays of data to express information and enhance understanding of presentations.
Graham, Michael J. (2013-04-23). Google Apps Meets Common Core (p. 117). SAGE Publications. Kindle Edition.
Above you will see the Common Core requirements found in chapter 7 forms. Common Core wants to make sure that students have a strong understanding of not only presenting information but the ability to organize the information they collect. Google forms can allow a student to conduct a survey and send it to people via email or gather the information from those who look at it online. Through gathering this information in the survey the student can then organize the answers and give a strong answer to the topic of their survey. This allows students to prepare for higher education which requires students to look at a variety of different opinions and information and come to their own conclusion with solid evidence.
Another way that google forms can be used is through the use of a questionnaire or survey from a school faculty member. There are many times when parents opinions and information about something is important, google forms would allow you to do this and post it on the schools Facebook, or other social media site to gather that important information. Of course this survey or questionnaire can also be sent via email to parents as well.
Google Forms allows teachers to capture and evaluate data efficiently. Teachers are now more than every being looked at from the bases of how their students perform. Because of this new evaluation style, it is important for teachers to stay on top of their students progress and performance. Graham points out how google forms can be a very effective way to do this efficiently.
Using google forms also allows for you to evaluate student performance based off different styles of presenting your lessons. Every student learns differently, but what google forms allows you to do is quickly evaluate students knowledge of the information and relate it back to how you taught your lesson. You can compare students results to the different approaches you take and be able to evaluate which approaches best works for your class. Additionally, with using google forms you can send quiz results directly to parents if they want to know how there kids are performing on a weekly bases. We all know that kids all try and hide there grades from time to time and this might be a good way to keep some parents in the loop. I would warn also though that parents knowing every grade or quiz score might impede the student from their ability to do better without parent involvement. Every child has to overcome a poor score on their own and learn to work harder, with added pressure because parents might know every grade might impede the student. Close evaluation must be taken with each student and how they react.
Below is a great HOW TO video of google forms.
Google Forms is also not a very difficult program to use, it does take a little bit to figure out where the embed code is and to figure out the layout of questions and background you might like. After the first 15 minutes of getting comfortable with where everything is it became very easy to create my own forms and self-grading quizzes.
In chapter 7 of graham.
4. Present information, findings, and supporting evidence such that listeners can follow the line of reasoning and the organization, development, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
5. Make strategic use of digital media and visual displays of data to express information and enhance understanding of presentations.
Graham, Michael J. (2013-04-23). Google Apps Meets Common Core (p. 117). SAGE Publications. Kindle Edition.
Above you will see the Common Core requirements found in chapter 7 forms. Common Core wants to make sure that students have a strong understanding of not only presenting information but the ability to organize the information they collect. Google forms can allow a student to conduct a survey and send it to people via email or gather the information from those who look at it online. Through gathering this information in the survey the student can then organize the answers and give a strong answer to the topic of their survey. This allows students to prepare for higher education which requires students to look at a variety of different opinions and information and come to their own conclusion with solid evidence.
Another way that google forms can be used is through the use of a questionnaire or survey from a school faculty member. There are many times when parents opinions and information about something is important, google forms would allow you to do this and post it on the schools Facebook, or other social media site to gather that important information. Of course this survey or questionnaire can also be sent via email to parents as well.
Google Forms allows teachers to capture and evaluate data efficiently. Teachers are now more than every being looked at from the bases of how their students perform. Because of this new evaluation style, it is important for teachers to stay on top of their students progress and performance. Graham points out how google forms can be a very effective way to do this efficiently.
Literacy for Educations
Today I will be discussing three different apps that can be used with the iPad for education. My review will come from a middle school perspective. The first app I will be review is a grammar app. Let's face, it grammar is not a fun or easy thing to learn and can quickly become one of those boring sequences in your class time that students dread. I believe that educators are some of the strongest fighters around because they have to constantly battle kids becoming bored. The original app that I was suppose to review was Grammar express, but did not find much on them, I found two great grammar apps I would love to try in the classroom.
Grammar App
The itouch middle school grammar app is a great app to help kids bring grammar to life. It offers a variety of different things among them being, reading, writing and composition, vocabulary and straight up grammar. There are levels before you can move on to the next group which allows you to evaluate students and their personal progress. They show a character and he has a different colored belt which corresponds to your level. I thought it would be fun for some kids. This app is one that might be used to enhance your children's knowledge during free time or study time. This app might be difficult to use in the class room with your personal lessons because you cannot choose the words that each student will be testing and learning.
Grammar Tap to Learn App
Another app that you might find useful is the grammar tap to learn app. This app is one better suited for your class lessons, because the style and layout can be used for your lessons in describing various parts of speech. Another cool feature of the app is it also has games. One game is that you have to land the appropriate aircraft word on the landing pad without them crashing into one another, this is a great fun app to make kids think quickly.
Dictionary App
The dictionary app is about what you would expect from a normal hardback dictionary. The advantages of this app is that you can find things a lot faster than if you were going to look them up in the book allowing students to use this resource efficiently. Another cool thing about the app is that it saves the words you looked up allowing you to view words or have students look up the words in class and review them quickly later for quizzes or test preparation.
Comic Life
Comic life is a great app that allows you to make comic strips. Comics and cartoons are always something that kids really enjoy and it will allow you to create many kinds of stories or bring different kinds of conversations to an already established cartoon. I can see this being a great app for English because it first requires reading, and this app can allow you to create a comic strip with grammatical errors that students have to find and correct. This would also be a great app for students to learn new words, having the words you wanted to have them learn in a designated color and the definition at the bottom. This would bring the definition and word in context to life while reading an exciting story.
Grammar App
The itouch middle school grammar app is a great app to help kids bring grammar to life. It offers a variety of different things among them being, reading, writing and composition, vocabulary and straight up grammar. There are levels before you can move on to the next group which allows you to evaluate students and their personal progress. They show a character and he has a different colored belt which corresponds to your level. I thought it would be fun for some kids. This app is one that might be used to enhance your children's knowledge during free time or study time. This app might be difficult to use in the class room with your personal lessons because you cannot choose the words that each student will be testing and learning.
Grammar Tap to Learn App
Another app that you might find useful is the grammar tap to learn app. This app is one better suited for your class lessons, because the style and layout can be used for your lessons in describing various parts of speech. Another cool feature of the app is it also has games. One game is that you have to land the appropriate aircraft word on the landing pad without them crashing into one another, this is a great fun app to make kids think quickly.
Dictionary App
The dictionary app is about what you would expect from a normal hardback dictionary. The advantages of this app is that you can find things a lot faster than if you were going to look them up in the book allowing students to use this resource efficiently. Another cool thing about the app is that it saves the words you looked up allowing you to view words or have students look up the words in class and review them quickly later for quizzes or test preparation.
Comic Life
Comic life is a great app that allows you to make comic strips. Comics and cartoons are always something that kids really enjoy and it will allow you to create many kinds of stories or bring different kinds of conversations to an already established cartoon. I can see this being a great app for English because it first requires reading, and this app can allow you to create a comic strip with grammatical errors that students have to find and correct. This would also be a great app for students to learn new words, having the words you wanted to have them learn in a designated color and the definition at the bottom. This would bring the definition and word in context to life while reading an exciting story.
Thursday, May 14, 2015
GoogleSheets
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NJP0vQWf4xyNX5fhggRbVyzaIlddICa3lvqWnzaEjOU/edit#gid=4
Graham Chapter 6
Taking a look into chapter six we again find how google sheets is great for the common core standards. Common Core leads teachers helps them guide students to understand the process of Mathematics Common Core standards wants to make sure that the students do not just capture the knowledge, but that they can successfully understand how to implement it. Google spreadsheets is a great tool to implement and test this knowledge common core wants students to have.. Being able to see number sense and type in the formula allows students to get a good taste and understanding of how their numbers, how Mathematics can apply to life. Certainly there is a formula we use in google, but the formulas are not posted anywhere, it allows the students to really be creative and explore all the possibilities of numbers and sequences.
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