Light at the End of the Tunnel

"Inside the Tunnel" by Autowitch from Flickr CC License CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Link: http://bit.ly/1y71HvR

The end is near! I will be honest. I am very happy that this is my last post. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to create and learn a variety of blogging websites as well as how they work. I am grateful to have utilized a blog to network and share the work I have created throughout the semester. However, I highly dislike writing. When I am asked to write and am not given a specific topic, I freeze. I push the assignment all the way to the bottom of the list. That being said, I will not spend my entire last post, blogging about how much I hate blogging.

Let's reflect a bit about the past semester in Educational Technology. I definitely dabbled in areas that were uncomfortable such as Creative Commons licenses and had fun creating with new presentation programs such as Prezi. I am looking forward to bringing Prezi into my classroom and having my students work on Digital Storytelling projects throughout the year. I will admit that I am disappointed in the lack of ready-to-use classroom ideas I feel I am leaving this class with. I predicted to be completing this class with a head full of new ideas that I couldn't wait to use with my students. Not only that, but I figured this would occur weekly. Instead, I found myself wasting large amounts of time reading 45-page chapters on dry technology information. 

Perhaps these jewels of classroom ideas are waiting for me within the Twitter feed that we were "feeding" throughout the semester. As I browsed through my classmates' tweets, there seemed to be some great ideas and articles. Sadly, there was not enough time to actually read them. I look forward to having this network of information and continuing to be connected to fellow educators and technology users. I am not a big Twitter user, but if you are ever looking for some new ideas to refresh your day-to-day curriculum, it's a great place to start!

Last, but not least, was Rubric creation. Rubric creation is special because it covers both categories of difficulty and extremely useful. Rubrics can be difficult to create as well as extremely time consuming. However, I am so glad that we created them for our digital storytelling projects. It made me reflect upon the rubrics I currently use with my students as well as where else I would like to add rubrics in my teaching. Many fellow classmates agreed that they assist in clarifying expectations and communication between teacher and students as well as parents. iRubric was a great website that was user-friendly for creating my project rubric. I was then able to embed this rubric into my wiki page.

I am looking forward to utilizing the few skills I feel that I am solidly taking away with my 4th graders as well as taking that large, expensive book back to the library for good!

Cheers!

The Pieces Come Together

"Puzzle" by Ella Phillips Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 2.0 License 

Link: http://bit.ly/1pdcPXo

Over the last few months, our Educational Technology instructor has been assigning readings and assignments to be completed weekly. These assignments would all come together to form a culminating Digital Storytelling project that we would guide our students through online. At the time of completing these assignments, it was often times difficult to see the bigger picture. Sometimes I had trouble understanding how it would all fit together, but I must say that I am enjoying the reflection. 

The assignments could be challenging, but were always educational. We were instructed to complete varying assignments from creating a wiki page to completing an entire digital storytelling presentation. 

We knew that over time, all of these assignments and readings would come together and make complete sense. Well, we are finally there! Yes, folks today I can say that I have completed all necessary checks, rechecks and submissions. My culminating project that consists of a working and public Wiki page complete with both curriculum and lesson plan pages has been submitted for grading. It is amazing to see how all of the work has been put together.

If you are interested in directing a project such as this, creating a class wiki page for your students to access data is a great idea. Within the wiki page, you can create pages for organization. For example, I have a curriculum page that includes: project expectations, sites for research, an embedded example Prezi, and an embedded rubric. There is also a page that includes the Lesson Plan. 

Now to reflect upon the process. I like to take what I have been completing and think about how I can implement it within my current 4th grade classroom. We complete a few large projects throughout the year and I am curious as to how I could break it apart and complete one piece at a time. Not only have I learned to use a wiki page to direct a project for my students, but I have also learned to direct a project by pieces. 

My First Digital Storytelling

I would appreciate your feedback on the following project. My project is a Novel Wrap Up of the current novel study we are completing of The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate in my 4th grade classroom. I really liked the suggestion of a fellow classmate to do a movie trailer of the book, but I wanted my students to start using Prezi at this point in the year versus iMovie. I feel that it is a useful program for this grade level. I am open to suggestions for digital storytelling names and projects other than just "summaries". 

I didn't just want my students to summarize, but to emphasize some of the important content the book offers. I offered three choices for my students to incorporate into their Novel Wrap Up. I chose to explain the Texan heroes that Calpurnia's brothers are named after. For other guidelines of the project, please see my curriculum page on my wiki page.