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

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.

Chapter 8 we find graham discussing drawings and how this program can be used to instruct students in the Common Core standards.
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.

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.

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.

GoogleSheets

Today's assignment I had the pleasure of making a grade book spreadsheet! I found this to be very fun... mostly.. I loved being able to put in the grades and watch the page come a live.  The google spread sheet is very similar to excel. I had used the google spreadsheet only a few times. There were not many differences, but one I did notice was that Excel has a lot more choices for templates that I found more desirable as a future teacher. Certainly I found some pretty good ones for google spreadsheets, but I wanted to implement a grade book that had three separate spread sheets. One for attendance, one for a compilation of points earned and  points earned per week. One thing that I realized was that I would have to formulate my own template for a weekly assignment list. This was my major struggle and eventually I came to a solution but could not implement it fully. I learned a lot by using and making my grade book and cannot wait to give it another try again. Below you will find the link to my grade book.

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.

Google Presentations

There is not a huge difference in Google Presentations and Microsoft PowerPoint, but the few differences there are might make people want to look into using Google presentations more often.

Google Presentations

Pros:
Allows users to collaborate on the document online.
Can access the document from any source.
Auto saves
Easy to use.

Cons:
Need an Internet Connection
Few designs/limited template creativity.


Microsoft PowerPoint

Pros:

Does not need the Internet
Ability to take notes on the slides
A lot of slide options

Cons:

Cost money
Not easily accessible by coworkers, friends, teachers etc.
Need PowerPoint to open the slide presentation.





In Grahams chapter 5 we find that google presentations offers the user the ability to make presentations using images, drawings and other graphics that correlate to the guidelines of common core, Common core guidelines for students presentations are "express and listen carefully to ideas, integrate information from oral, visual, quantitative, and media sources, evaluate what they hear, use media and visual displays strategically to help achieve communicative purposes, and adapt speech to context and task.”

Not only does google presentations allow students to create beautiful presentation to captivate their audience, it allows them to share those presentations with students, teachers and anyone else. The simplicity of sharing their work online is a huge advantage. During college I always used Microsoft PowerPoint and I cannot remember the amount of annoyances of emailing things to myself to work on it in a computer lab. Google presentations allows you to  have access anywhere. On way I can see how this can be useful is that students can grade their peers without anonymously. You could easily make an assignment where you have to go online and grade the different presentations on content among helping each other as well.

Teachers will find that the simplicity and flexibility of google presentations might be something they favor over Microsoft power point because google presentations is compatible with importing PowerPoint slides into the google program. Google presentations can be implemented into any computer, so if your school is Mac supporters, no problem! If they love Microsoft, no problem!

One issue that teachers and students must be careful of is that when sharing information to make sure that the team is aware of the changes and do not walk into a presentation and the order or material be different.

Over all I like what google presentations has to offer, even though I was a heavy PowerPoint user. Even with the lack of template creativity among some other things, it really is not a factor when the object under the common core requirements is to make sure students can accurate make a PowerPoint presentation. Google Presentations allows you to do that.



Graham, Michael J. (2013-04-23). Google Apps Meets Common Core (p. 72). SAGE Publications. Kindle Edition.

Uses of iPads in Education A tool Or Necessity?

The world of technology has taken off  the last ten years with the development of smart phones to smart watches and everything in between. I  could not imagine using an Ipad in the class when I was in high school and now they can be found everywhere within the class. How can such a device be so effective in learning, that even now the schools who once opposed it, are seriously considering the advantages of such a device.

Ipads offer a wide range of economic benefits. Certainly a big portion of the schools government aid is directed towards its teachers salary and its books.  Books can average $500-800 a year per student. A current  64GB Ipad Air with just wifi cost $499. If we were in charge, we would look to find any way we could to cut cost within reason of course, but for schools today, they just might have found a way to curb cost and increase productivity in the classroom.

Ipads also offer a seamless transition between material and the video/audio that can help enhance the lesson. There is no more tedious or burdensome CD and extra curriculum packet to read that helps you bring the lesson to life, it can be found all in one on the Ipad.

Ipads allow students to interact with the world around them seamlessly.


Educators strive to bring the class to life and there is much debate on whether or not Ipads are making a difference because of their technology or just because it's the "new" thing with students. Educators should be very careful before they make their evaluations, because the world they grew up in is often the one they carry with them in the class room, but in reality the class room is far different than what once was. Take for example my high school experience. I graduated in 2006, the iPhone did not exist yet. I first received a cellphone when I was 17.The technology we had in class was the roll around projector. I was very used to a normal class with a lecture and pencil and paper, . Now let us jump ahead to now where younger children are having access to these different devices. Where once when I was 17 I had just a phone, now small kids at age 6-8 have phones that can access the internet.  This is a day and age where parents are distracting their children using these devices. Is this a bad thing? I am unsure, but what I have noticed is that those kids who have been heavily influenced using these devices are stimulated and used to using these devices for a variety of things all ready. New Jersey implemented an Ipad only class and the students tested 90% above the benchmark compared with 60% of other classes.


Certainly an argument can be made that teachers still have to be creative and that the Ipad is just a tool, but watching how generations find themselves behind a screen at an early age, I believe it is more than that, it may one day become a necessity. Students are engaging this world at a much different pace then we ever did. As educators we should be careful not to make the mistake of assuming that the kids of today are inspired by the same things the kids of yesterday are. I encourage all educators that though we have our convictions of how education should be, our only conviction should be the success of a student.

https://sites.google.com/a/tonykrug.info/tablet_tableau/tablets-in-education/uses_of_ipads

http://www.eclassroomnews.com/2011/06/02/new-jersey-district-plans-ipad-only-algebra-course/3/

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2011/05/interesting-ways-to-use-ipad-in.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+freetech4teachers%2FcGEY+%28Free+Technology+for+Teachers%29&utm_content=Google+Reader#.VVAiY_lVhBc

I am most familiar with Microsoft word and that is because I mostly use windows operating system. I have also used google docs however.

One of the major advantages that Word has is its versatility.
Word has the ability to give you a lot of editing, font and other applications within its program.
Google Docs does not have as many editing options.  Word also carries many professional editing abilities.

Word does not have the ability to be used anywhere like google docs. There has been many situations where I have needed to write something out and did not have access to a computer and google docs helped me. This is the biggest advantage of google docs, its ability to not be restricted by the device, but can be accessed anywhere.

Google docs cannot really attach or upload images, but does posses collaborative editing, the ability for multiple people to work on one document.


pg 43 of Graham talks about the necessity for students to start using digital tools to creatively write. Having access to google docs is easier for younger students in this critical component in common core Anchor Standard 6 because it allows students to get a taste of creative writing within technology without the burden of a keyboard.

Tablets - Options/Uses

Technology is playing a bigger role in peoples lives than ever before.It is almost hard to ignore technology in every facet of our lives. People are learning differently and they learn through a vast array of devices. If schools  do not  try to implement technology in the classroom, it might be a fatal error. One of the big pushes is to have tablets in the classroom. How can tablets be beneficial for our kids? Most parents look at tablets as another distraction or gaming device they pull out to keep their children quite, but tablets can be a great instrument for our schools. Like all things, we can use it wisely and benefit or poorly and fail.   Take a look at some of the pros and cons of tablets we can use in the classroom.

Nook

 Pros: 

*Ability to make notes and references while reading.

*Software available on most devices.

*Expandable storage capacity

*Can use flash

Con:

*No Cellular Connectivity

* Cannot play or stream videos well or at all

Kindle

Pros: 

*Text to speech functionality.

* Has the richest sources of books.(access to amazon)

*Ability to use Flash

Cons:

* Very limited apps depending on model.

* Limited storage capacity.

Ipad(Apple)

Pros: 

*Has the richest source of applications(apps) This is often overlooked, but there are many apps that make up and enhance the learning interaction of the Ipad.

* Ability to organize your data,books apps etc.

*variety of options with Cellular connectivity.

Cons:

*No Flash player

*Ibooks is limited on books that can be purchased.

One particular feature that everyone must consider is the Internet connectivity for each tablet. The internet is how each tablet can download apps, books and the various other items students will use during the use of their tablet, Most tablets have wifi and is not much of a concern when accessing the internet but not all tablets have cellular internet. Cellular internet is provided by a phone company which allows for you to access the internet from anywhere, not from just a hot spot. 

Prices for connectivity depend on the provider and service that you would like. The prices to connect are a high monthly fee starting around $100 a month.

It would be more cost effective for schools to invest in good internet with top of the line wireless routers than to invest the money in cellular internet for a lot of tablets. Certainly one issue may be overloading the wifi network, but the need for cellular for every tablet is limited if unneeded. I could see the usefulness of some select tablets within the school system having them,, but almost everyone has the ability or can find a location for wifi if the students needed or were allowed to take them home.

When considering which tablet might be good for kids at school we have to look at a variety of criteria. One major point is cost, the cost of the tablet will be a major factor when deciding on a device because many will be purchased. by far the kindle and nook are the cheapest options. Another factor is the resources. These tablets are going to be used in the classroom for educational purposes and it is important to be able to have a vast array of resources to use. Amazon really has some good options when it comes to the ability of resources. Another factor in determining the right tablet is the ability for it to be used, the interface with the Ipad allows any user the effortless ease to move from watching a movie to suddenly reading an article. When making the final decision on what tablet might be right for the classroom, it might be wise to consider what tablet can offer you the most options and abilities to learn. 

My First experience with technology

The very first experience I had with technology was with an original GameBoy at age eight. A new world drastically opened up in my life that I had no idea existed. From this point on, the world of technology would consume me.