Saturday, February 7, 2015

Unit 2 Web 2.0

Hello,

I currently teach a 4th and 5th grade split. I started with only 4th grade but due to enrollment numbers, I had to do a 4th/5th split again as last year. My situation is somewhat unique because this is only our 2nd year of the schools opening. Our students are diverse, coming from Detroit, Pontiac, and Waterford.  When viewing my student examples, keep in mind 90% are operating 2-3 grade levels lower than their current grade. I had 5th graders who couldn't read or subtract and I'm asking them to divide. There were no examples of prior IEP's. I was elated after tons of documentation, we were able to get IEP's for these students. We have a 6th grader who is 13 and was constantly being held back, no intervention ever given according to her records. We had no curriculum, besides the Common Core requirements, and our ability to effectively search for free products. I had a slight advantage because I used to work for NAT GEO learning as an installation specialist, so I had some exposure to many educational products and having educators and administrators as my clients, I received a lot of feedback.

Having said that, since we don't have many textbooks, almost everything I use is technology based or printed out.There are subscription based online programs I use. The main one I use for reading and math also has features available for messaging me and each other called "the wall". I had to disable this feature rather quickly after reading their posts of insulting each other. I wish I hadn't had to to that but I felt it necessary. I have received facebook requests from students but I never accept because I am afraid of the ramifications. I have friends from high school who use inappropriate language or post unsavory ideas which I do not want my students to associate me with. I never post anything on twitter and mostly just follow educationally based accounts. I have considered creating a teacher only facebook page since our school has one, I would like to put my donors choose project there.

I do have a classroom website via weebly which we use on a daily basis. This does have a blogging feature but I have not used it, and my students have asked about it. I use it as a long-term project page and announcements.

I believe the following would fall under  the category of modification.
I have also created a google site with a google group where students can submit assignments via the group and I can return.    
 Curriculum web

Augmentation:
On the same site, I created a page where students evaluate the project by competing a survey using a google form I created. It can be seen here

 The one problem I face is email addresses. Many parents at this age do not want their kids to have an email address. I also did a project under a generic gmail account and students worked on presentations in google slides under the same account and I could check on their progress. They could also access this from home, which they did. The problem arose, though, that sometimes they would go into another students project to mess around with it, infuriating that student. Why? I have no idea, because they thought it would be funny.
On one of the pages of my weebly site, I have examples of student work where they created a prezi or the google slides for a book and movie comparison. for the 2014-2015 school year, they added an option that allows for easily adding music.

You can click the student link above to view the presentations. The problem we had was adding music. At that time, prezi would only allow a certain file type of music files, and I could not figure out on the fly how to add free royalty free music files to the google slides. Prezi used to be cumbersome to use, but they have updated it and my higher level students were able to master it pretty quickly, beside the music aspect. To get around this, they added a youtube video in the background, but you couldn't do this if you presented in auto mode, only in manual mode.

Redefinition:
We have not had students create any videos as of yet, I have made videos of the class and shown them. However, due to the levels they are behind, this has been put on the back burner. We, as a whole, have made our primary goals of getting these kids on grade level in reading and math. I have tried doing videos of my students, but many have low confidence levels and run away from this. I do have students who would love it. I have one student in mind who hates reading a writimg (English is his second language), but loves talking about himself and his opinions, so the I believe would surely be doable for him.



11 comments:

  1. I think it's awesome that you take time to create technology-based lessons for your class. I would think that would be difficult having a combination of fourth and fifth grade. I also use weekly as a class website. I have not use Google forms but I have seen our school use it. Have you ever use survey monkey? If so do you like Google forms better than survey monkey? I could see parents not wanting their students to have a email address while in elementary school being an issue

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have not tried survey monkey, I haven't looked at other things similar to google forms, but I will check it out. Google forms is so quick and easy, I hadn't searched for an alternative.

      Delete
  2. I think you're doing a good job using technology with a split class. I would like to suggest that you can also have your students use online dictionary instead of writing definitions on paper. I'm not sure about audio books cost or subscription service, but this will help with your students have their reading materials available online, you can also use google earth and have your students to locate the setting or from their reading identify where that city or state maybe located, and have them record on their phones how they role play characters in their stories.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Having students use an online dictionary instead of writing definitions on paper would be a great S.

      Delete
    2. I do use the online dictionary in the computer lab for PC based reading, but use a regular version when in class since we only have 4 laptops.

      Delete
    3. I agree with funcone you are doing a fantastic job teaching students in the split classroom. However, I do think having students write out a few words from the dictionary definitions is not a bad thing to do. I believe students, especially younger students can benefit from handwriting. I would not make it an extensive assignment, but allowing them the opportunity to write is productive.

      Delete
    4. I do think this is valuable as well, hanwriting, vocab and spelling are a real problem, especially with my ESL students. Thanks....

      Delete
    5. I do think this is valuable as well, hanwriting, vocab and spelling are a real problem, especially with my ESL students. Thanks....

      Delete
  3. For Augmentation, that is frustrating, especially when students tamper with other students' work. There are other course websites out there (free) that your school can look into for individual student logins for collaborations.

    Your R would definitely work with your assignments as soon as your class is ready.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I also believe that creditable free websites are available that are safe and can be monitored strictly by the teacher. This will allow the teacher to assign accounts, emails, etc. as well as provide information to parents.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have searched, I have not come across any free PC monitoring program, do you know of one?

      Delete