This week’s exploration centered on screencasting and its possibilities for use in the classroom. I primarily focused on Screencast-o-matic, although there are other possibilities such as Jing available. Screencast-o-matic offered a free download of software and was very simple to install and run on my home laptop. When I had the software installed, I simply resized my viewing screen to include my home screen, and then I was ready to begin. The important thing to remember when screencasting is that simply speaking into a microphone is not sufficient to produce a good screencast. Links to websites must be checked first and a script should be generated and practiced several times prior to production. The screencast that I produced for this week focused on possibilities for utilization in the classroom and gave a brief demonstration of how I would use the tool in my AP Psychology class with my own students. I hope you enjoy the screencast, and I look forward to hearing from you with comments or suggestions to make these better!
After examining social networking this week, my next task was to explore Google Docs. Fortunately, I had some experience utilizing these, and Google is a very intuitive system. In the past, I have created a spreadsheet to keep up with all of my AP Psychology students’ email addresses for importing into our Wikispace. I have also taken numerous surveys and filled out forms using a Google Doc managed by our Student Government Association teacher/sponsor. The possibilities for Google Docs are so great. What I am looking forward to doing with them at this point is having students create presentations across classes so that groups in each class are able to add information, analysis, and pictures. In this way, they will be able to collaborate with each other and collectively build more knowledge. For my own exploration into presentation, I created a brief overview of the direction I am in the process of taking my AP Psychology classes. My hope is that as I go through this presentation with them, they will start to get excited about taking our class in a more technologically advanced direction. This week’s exploration centered on social networking, specifically looking at Edmodo and Classroom 2.0. Although I utilize various social networking sites and I know teachers who use Edmodo, I am new to these. Setting up an Edmodo account was incredibly easy as Cobb County Schools already has a membership with them. As I explored, I focused mainly on AP Psychology searches and was surprised to find several other teachers looking for the same things I am, i.e. review resources and online collaboration. I went ahead and set up an online classroom for AP Psychology, and I plan to have my students register for the classroom in the next week when we have computer lab time. I also browsed through some of the apps available through Edmodo, and while I have not found any specifically targeted to AP Psychology thus far, I did find several that I am excited about sharing with the U.S. History teachers at my school, such as Founding Documents of the United States of America (https://www.edmodo.com/home#/store/app/?app_id=784) and Guns, Germs, and Steel (https://www.edmodo.com/home#/store/app/?app_id=198).
The second social networking resource I explored this week was Classroom 2.0. What I found here was absolutely amazing! On this site, teachers have an opportunity to connect with other teachers to share resources, ideas, and tools. I spent some time searching through the forum and videos for Psychology – an AP Psychology search netted me nothing in the forum. When I searched for Psychology though, I found several teachers looking for ideas and other teachers to foster a collaborative environment for themselves and their students. I am so excited to reach out to some teachers in a few months for collaboration during my abnormal psychology and treatment unit. On Classroom 2.0, I also found links to online and in-person conferences and got lost for quite some time exploring http://connectededucators.org/. I believe that overall this week what I learned is some definitive ways to connect with other Psychology and AP Psychology teachers in the country. As the only AP Psychology teacher in my school, the feeling of being connected has been lost in past years. This is a wonderful beginning. YouTube has been a great source for finding video on almost any topic at any time for years. TeacherTube is the more school appropriate version of YouTube; however, it typically is slower and more bogged down with advertisements. This week, one of my tasks was to explore YouTube and its school counterpart, TeacherTube for various videos, including videos relating to teaching content, how to videos, and videos just for fun. As I mentioned in my blog post below on podcasting, I have utilized YouTube to access TED Talks for several months now. These are fantastic videos on a wide range of topics, including this one from Sir Ken Robinson that most people have seen by now or heard about. In this video, Sir Robinson discusses the possibility that schools are killing creativity. I love this video because I believe it empowers students to think. Another video that I found and have seen before is a clip from The Big Bang Theory in which Sheldon trains Penny utilizing the operant conditioning principles of B.F. Skinner. The YouTube user, TeachingBizVids, that posted this has almost twenty other videos that I am excited to use in my classroom. Not all of TeachingBizVids’ videos are appropriate for high school use, but the ones on stress management and academic dishonesty are great! The video below is a how to video song from a first grade class on how to tell time on a clock. I love that this makes learning how to tell time fun for the children, and my one year old son really enjoyed dancing around to the song while it played! Although I could give you hundreds of just for fun videos available on YouTube, I will leave you with the always popular funny cat video below. I can truly say that I have enjoyed every minute of this YouTube exploration, and it has given me even more educational and silly videos to explore in my spare time! I must admit to being a complete novice to podcasting. Although I have an iPhone and have used it to listen to music for years, until this week, I had never subscribed to a podcast. However, given the direction of this assignment, I did some exploring using iTunes and eventually downloading the Podcast app offered by Apple. My focus this week was mainly on the Education category, although with four children at home, I also looked at Kids and Family. I explored several podcasts, focusing mostly on Grammar Girl and TED Talks. Grammar Girl was extremely helpful for my ninth grade daughter as she is our resident grammar expert. TED Talks was one that I have accessed through YouTube prior to this week; however, I love that the new ones will automatically download to my phone now. This gives my kids and me something productive to listen to on the way to school. In terms of how I can use this in my classroom, the possibilities are endless! Of course, the potential for my own podcast is there, and I think that I will be working towards that with helpful hints for the AP Psychology exam, questions of the day, and other useful items. Before I get going on that though, I can recommend to my students that they listen to the TED Talks at least once a week to foster a discussion on Fridays. This would allow me to begin to implement more of a “flipped classroom” and put the onus on my students to bring in items for discussion. For information on flipped classrooms, please check out Knewton’s explanation at http://www.knewton.com/flipped-classroom/. For my first attempt at podcasting, please play the audio below. This is a free podcast, hosted by podomatic.com. This week in class, we evaluated many, many web tools for use in the classroom. The one I am the most excited about is socrative.com. Socrative allows you to set up quizzes and allows students to respond with their cell phones, computers, or other web-enabled devices. Teachers set up a free account with Socrative, and it gives them a room number. When students enter the student site, they enter their teachers’ room number and have access to the quiz for the period. Socrative basically eliminates the need for “clickers” in the classroom, and it also allows you to share quizzes with other teachers, which is great for collaborative teams. Additionally, when students are done quizzing, the teacher is given the option of exporting a spreadsheet of student grades.
Along with teaching AP Psychology as I have blogged about before, I also teach Economics in a team taught setting. The Economics lead teacher is an amazing leader and is always open to trying new techniques. We have already set up our mid-unit benchmark for this unit in the computer lab utilizing Socrative. In our school, cellular phone use is very limited, and we are not quite ready to open the door to the potential issues of allowing cell phone use in the classroom. However, we do believe that by securing a computer lab for use of Socrative this week, we have (hopefully) eliminated potential cell phone use issues as well as the potential for inability to participate if students do not have smart phones. I am looking forward to hearing from anyone else who has successfully – or not so successfully – used Socrative in the past. I could use some hints! |
Leah Kurtz
Welcome to my Weebly blog! This is a chronicle of my experiences in the Ed.S. for Instructional Technology program at Kennesaw State University. Come along with me on my grand adventure. Archives
July 2014
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