Summary of Learning

                For my Summary of Learning, I chose to use Google Slides. I chose this because I think slides are a very simple, effective way to get information across that can be reviewed at the viewer’s leisure. Unlike a video or audio recording, which must be paused “rewound” to hear something again, you can reread things as necessary, or stay on a slide for as long as you need.

            My biggest takeaway from Educational Technology was to simply not be afraid of technology. The twenty first century is essentially revolving around technology, and integrating it into classrooms from day one will prepare our students for the technology driven future.

            Going into early childhood education, I have struggled with how I will integrate technology in the classroom. Most methods I see seem to be for older students. I do have some ideas. I intend to use a blog as a means of keeping parents updated on what is going on in the classroom. I definitely want to use ebooks in my classroom after the video we watched about them. They are a good way to involve students in their education and motivate them further. I also want to use technology such as tablets and applications in my classroom, because most students have now grown up with technology and are very skilled in it from a young age. Tablets are an unprecedented resource for students to use in the classroom due to the plethora of applications available to assist in teaching any subject.

            My final statement would have to be that I believe that integrating technology into the classroom is not only an option, but a necessity. It is a huge part of society today, arguably the biggest. By integrating it from the beginning of a student’s education, not only as a supplement to education but as a major part of it, we are preparing them for success in our technology driven future. 

Wrapping Up My Major Project

            The time has come to wrap up my major project, and this Ed Tech blog as a whole. Teaching myself calligraphy was a lot more annoying and also a lot more rewarding than I thought it would be.

          Here is a collage I made on picmonkey of my starting and final attempts at calligraphy.

           Here are my final attempts at calligraphy for this project. My penmanship has improved so much, and despite the mistakes I still am making, I've improved a lot. 

            It was not without trial and error along the way. Example, here’s my attempt once I finally got a pen to work.

Obviously not going as well as the markers do. I could not manipulate the thickness of the line the way I can with a marker, and still could not consistently get the pen to work.

This was a fun project to do, and was something I could easily do while I was watching reruns of Friends on Netflix in the evening. There was a lot of frustration, especially in the beginning, but this is something I think I’ve personally become pretty decent at over the last few weeks. I could definitely see myself working on this as a hobby, especially when it comes time for my mom’s wedding and she needs help doing things such as table number cards.

To summarize my project, I made a concept map full of things about calligraphy using bubbl.us.

Major Project Week 5 - Finishing Up With My Book

            This week is the final week of “real” new work on my major project. This week, I did my best with the last four fonts left in my calligraphy book.

            The first script I worked on was called Black Letter. This one is one of the fanciest, most complicated scripts I have worked on yet. I did my practice strokes as always, then the alphabet, then some words.

            After doing the first script was when I decided to try my hand at every script left in the book. For these three scripts, I just did the alphabet.

The second script I did was called Chancery. This one is a little plainer, but not quite as “plain,” or as I like to call it, classic, as Sans Serif.

The third script is called Uncial. It is also a more classic, uncomplicated script. However, it is supposed to have very thick lines. If the calligraphy pens I have actually worked and I was not using calligraphy markers I might have had more success, but I was unable to get as thick of lines as I wanted.

The final script left in my book is called Batarde. I struggled with some of the letters, but I think overall they look pretty good.

I finally brought out the nice paper that came with my calligraphy set. It was actually a bit harder to write on than the notebook paper I’ve been using thus far. I felt as though my lines were not as smooth, and I had to go over them a few times. Though it’s (clearly) not perfect, and there are some mistakes obviously made, I think I’ve made pretty good progress in the past few weeks.

To wrap up my major project next week, I’m going to try one last time to use my fancy calligraphy pens, and I intend to write something in every font I’ve tried.

Ed Tech For Teachers

            This week’s topic was about tools that can assist the education process. I knew about a few of them, but had not heard of a lot. I think technology is something that can help teachers save so much time, which is so precious in an education environment. One thing that was mentioned a lot was Google Classroom. It takes away all the stress that comes with making sure you can get all of your students their assignments, or making sure they have access to what they need. With Google Classroom and the countless tools it has, it takes away all of that stress, because everything is right there.

            There were many other tools available to help a teacher. There are two lists we read of websites, and I thought both were great. One listed polldaddy, which can be used to make surveys. I know if I have a quick and easy survey to fill out where I just have to click a few buttons or type a few words, I’ll definitely do that. That could almost definitely be used to contact parents about simple things, and I’m sure the response would be great to that. I’d love to use that in my future classroom to communicate with parents. One tool I hope I never need but is cool nonetheless is a Virtual Assistant. You can hire an assistant to help with things such as imputing digital grades and data, or edit PowerPoints. I hope that I’m never so busy that I can’t afford the time to put in my grades myself, but good to have available if you need it. There was also wunderlist, which is a way to help keep you organized, and it can be shared with others,a huge plus when working collaboratively with colleagues.

            All of these different types of tools can benefit everyone. As a teacher, many of them could help me save time, which as I said previously, is priceless for a teacher. I could spend more time with my students, or doing things like planning lessons instead of trying to organize everything. This is beneficial for myself, my students, and their parents, because their children are reaping the benefit of me having more time. The tools like polldaddy that can be used for surveys with parents are also beneficial for myself and parents, because it saves time and is easy.

            Technology is wonderful, as a tool in the classroom and a tool for the teacher. It can be used for almost anything, and I’m glad there are specific websites out there than can be used by a teacher to help them save time and energy so it can be devoted to their students.

Major Project Week 4 - Some More Sans Serif, and Roman

            I think this week learning about calligraphy went pretty well. I love Sans Serif, and I’m getting a lot better at it. I started with doing a practice sheet of the alphabet again, and as always, there were some mistakes.

            I then wrote out a couple of pages. I’m getting to the point I don’t need to be looking at the book for each individual pen stroke anymore, I just check every once in a while to make sure I’m doing my letters the right way.

            Since Sans Serif was going well, I decided to move on to Roman, the next script in my book. I started with the practice strokes again.

            After the practice strokes, I practiced the alphabet in Roman script. This script has serifs attached to a lot of the letters, and making a serif with a marker is pretty hard, and looks pretty messy. You can see the spots on the serifs on the letters when I went over a few too many times and it looks darker than the rest. The serifs also aren’t the best. You have to round the corners, which is harder than it looks because of how big the marker I’m using is. If I was using a pen, it might be easier, but I still can’t get the pens that came with the kit to work. Guess I should’ve listened to the Amazon reviews and not trusted the pens. Good thing I bought the markers just in case.

           

            After practicing the uppercase alphabet, I realized there was no lowercase alphabet in Roman script in my book. I decided to just write some words, and made up lowercase letters as I went. It was not easy.

            In all of the pictures, you can see the darker spots where I struggled with the Serifs. In this picture, I was concentrating too hard on my letters and accidentally wrote the same thing over and over. Oops.

            Today, I determined that I like Sans Serif better than Roman. Serifs are not for me.

            Next week, I’m going to go through the rest of my book and see what other scripts there are.

Blending Learning

This week’s topic was blended learning. In the beginning, I was a bit confused by what exactly blended learning is, because it was made clear in Hawthorne’s topic video that it was not just online classes. After watching more of her video, the other videos we were given, and reading a few articles, I think I’ve got it. Blending learning is learning that is done in part in a brick and mortar building, and in part online. I believe this infographic we were provided has a very good summary of it. It also gives examples of each type of blending learning, which was a very easy way for me to understand what exactly they all were.

                I think blended learning is a wonderful concept that is becoming a reality in many schools. This semester has personally had more diversity with online resources than any of my classes before. This class, Ed Tech, for instance. We met face to face three times in the beginning of the semester, and the rest of it has been online, with the option of attending the labs every week if we choose to for additional help. I also have a completely online class this semester, Intro to Exceptionalities. The only times we have (optionally) met have been an intro session and some exam reviews. I also have two classes that are primarily face to face that we occasionally have online days in. This has made for a very different type of learning for me, though I am really enjoying it. Like one of the kids said in this video, I have always gotten bored in traditional face to face classes. I always remember a time in my 7^th grade pre-algebra class, where I was working ahead and got in trouble because I wasn’t sticking with the class. Had that been an independent partially online course, it would have been fine if I had been working by my own pace. In my Intro to Education class, we watched a film called Teach. Here is a preview for it. In that film, one of the teachers starts using Khan Academy in her math class, and it allowed students to work at their own pace. I think that’s the best way to teach –personalized to each student, at their own pace, to help them succeed. Blending learning makes that possible.

Once I become a teacher, I hope to be able to use some technology, though I think that having a blended classroom in my chosen group, early childhood education, would be somewhat hard to do. Without meeting with the children face to face every day for the entire school day, I couldn’t imagine being able to teach things like how to read and write or how to do math could be possible. I did google it, and found this webpage about how to integrate technology. It listed things such as using a computer to enhance teaching or give more practice with a concept, which is definitely in the realm of possibility and something I hope to do in every class I teach.

Major Project Week 3 - Continuing with Sans Serif

            This week went a bit better than last week, if I do say so myself. It did start with a setback. Last week, I said I was going to try to use the pens with ink that came with my calligraphy set. I did try. However, I did not succeed. Here's the way the pens come in the kit.

 To use the pen, you had into insert an ink cartridge into the barrel of the pun and puncture it so ink could flow. I did puncture it, then shook it to try and get the ink flowing. I spent about ten minutes trying to use the pen. It worked a little bit, but I just could not get a steady flow out of it. I could barely get lines out of it most of the time. I marked up an entire piece of paper trying to get the pen to work before I gave up and used another Sharpie calligraphy marker. 

            I did some practice strokes again, and practiced my alphabet.

            I then just started writing. First, since Friends was playing on Netflix, I wrote out all of their names just as some word practice.

            Second, I recently put up my Christmas decorations (I don’t even care that it’s only November 6^th, the holiday season starts right after Halloween for me), I just did a bunch of Christmas words.

Then, I started writing sentences. I wrote “Bernadette Grady’s Educational Technology Major Project.”

            Then finally, I wrote “For my major project, I am teaching myself how to write in Calligraphy. This is Sans Serif Script.”

            I think that since last week, I have improved a lot. My flow is better, and my letters aren’t as disjointed. There’s definitely still room for improvement, Though these are repeat pictures, here's a collage I made on pixlr of last week and this week's progress, and I think my progress is evident.

Sometimes I feel like my writing is like that of a child who is still learning how to write properly. I guess I kind of am, since writing in calligraphy is a whole new style of writing with certain ways to hold the pen/marker. With letters that aren't the right size and are just shaped wrong, it's a little discouraging. But I am showing some definite progress since I started, and I think I’m getting there. Next week, I hope to improve my flow a little bit, and keep consistent with my sizing. If all goes well, I intend to move onto the next script in my beginner's book, Roman. 

Formative and Summative Assessments

            This week, we learned about assessments, both formative and summative. Personally, I believe assessments are very important. They have been demonized recently by media, parents, students, and teachers alike, but when done well, they are very effective learning tools and can measure learning in a way nothing else can.

I’ve heard of formative assessments, but never really knew what they are until today. This page gave a pretty good comparison between formative and summative assessments, but the gist is that formative are happening while the learning is taking place and measuring what is being learned, and summative are a final assessment at the end of a unit. Until now, I never realized that essentially anything you do in a classroom, whether it be a worksheet, a quiz, or a paper, is a formative assessment measuring student progress prior to the final, summative assessment (usually the final unit test, in my experience). Growing up sometimes I felt that the things I was doing in the classroom were kind of useless and not helping me, but now I realize how important those things were to both myself and my teachers, so they could see how I was doing.

This week’s topic video was done with Scott Kinkoph, and he used a few formative assessment tools that were pretty cool. One was PearDeck. It allowed him to ask students questions real time while he did his lecture, which was an awesome tool. He could give questions that were options A or B, Yes or No, numbers, or even open ended questions where the students would type a response and submit it. Using it, he could see the answers as they were coming in, and use them to influence the direction of his lecture. I think that’s a very useful tool, because the students can actively participate in what they’re learning. The other tool he used was EduCanon. I got to try it out on one of this week’s videos. It was a very useful tool. It asked you questions throughout the video, and then you can immediately find out if you got the answer correct or not. I loved that tool, because knowing there were questions coming that could quiz me and make sure I understood helped me pay attention to the video and make sure I was really absorbing it. Had I taken a quiz at the end instead of throughout the video, I think I would have done worse on it.

Personally, I believe the most striking thing about this presentation was just generally about formative assessments. The fact that they’re the best tool that we have as teachers to assess what our students are actually learning and are still struggling with is crucial. In the future, I hope I have more opportunities to measure my own learning and then my students learning using software such as the ones we used today or even good old fashioned paper and pencil assignments such as quizzes and worksheets. 

Major Project Week Two - Writing Some Letters

                For my second week of working on calligraphy for my major project, I started with the basics. The book I bought had a page full of practice strokes to make. I started with some notebook paper, and one of the Sharpie calligraphy markers I bought. I didn’t want to waste the good expensive paper on my very first attempts at calligraphy, and I also wanted the guidelines that notebook paper could give me.

Here’s a picture of my attempts at both the practice strokes of general calligraphy, and of Sans Serif, the font I chose to work with. 

Not very good. Even without seeing the exact way it’s supposed to look (I don’t want to take pictures from my book and then upload them here), you can see the inconsistencies in the same shapes. I was really struggling to hold the marker at the 35 degree angle necessary for this script.

But this is my first time, so I soldiered on.  I practiced the letters of Sans Serif several times, which actually ended up taking a lot longer than I thought it would. Getting the angles and motions right is a struggle, especially since this is “an art” and I am most definitely not an artist. Here’s a shot of my first and second tries. 

It did get a bit better the second time. I started to get a feel for how to do them, though I’m still nowhere even near being right. I was still struggling with holding the pen at the correct angle.

Next week, I plan to continue practicing with this font. I want to try to make it look better, and try writing some words and not just the alphabet. I am also considering trying to use the actual pens my calligraphy book came with instead of the calligraphy Sharpie, because there's a chance using the real pen could improve my style.

Cool Tool Review - Little Story Maker

            For my last cool tool review, I used a storytelling tool. I used the iOS app, Little Story Maker, to make a short “book.” The app is free to download from the App Store, and as far as I know there are no in app purchases. You don’t need to make an account, just download the app.

            To showcase the app, I made a book about my boyfriend and I’s trip to Walt Disney World in May of 2015. To be reflected upon later, you are unable to save your book to your phone, so I took screenshots of every page I made and turned it into a Power Point that I saved as a video so I could upload it to this blog post.

            This tool makes books. You can choose to add a new story. 

You then give your book a title, a cover, and choose a layout. 

The title is limited to so many characters, I tried to add May 2015 to the end of my title and it would not fit. The cover must be a square. Then you go page by page, adding photos and texts. The text on the pages is also limited.  There is no option to save the book, you can only view it in app.

I personally believe this app does its job kind of poorly. It does work, but I think it could be done a lot better. It could possibly be because I’m using an iPhone and not an iPad, but when I was typing the text, I couldn’t see what I was typing, shown in the photo below.

 I had to check my spelling after I saved the text. You’ll notice some of the first letters aren’t capitalized. I tried to go back to fix it, but I couldn’t highlight the word to fix it without deleting everything, which I found to be very inconvenient.

If this app worked as it was intended to, or I suppose to my possibly high standards, I would definitely be using it in my future classroom. I could use it to create biographies of students, or we could make a book about something we’re learning about in class, such as colors or shapes. This could definitely be a technological component of TPACK. If we were learning about shapes, they could take pictures of shapes to upload to the class book about that shape.

I would use this tool because as we learned last week, e-books in the classroom are simply awesome. You can see a full post about e-books here on this blog post of mine. They are a good way to get students excited about something, and seemed to motivate them like nothing else. Being published is huge for kids, even if it is just in a classroom app seen by us. They could write a book on paper, then edit and “publish” it with the app.

Students could easily use this app on their own. All you do is tap the screen to add pictures, then type your captions, nothing too complicated. It is very self-explanatory, and was the first cool tool I didn’t have to look up anything about to use. There is a help page in the settings, and while reviewing it after finishing my story there are some features I wasn’t aware of while working on my book. The only issue I could see arising is students having trouble typing on the screen. I did get a little frustrated myself while using it, because the app can only be used sideways, and that’s not how I ever use my phone, making it a little difficult for me.  

This is a pretty decent app, just not one I would choose to use further. It does, however, does what it is advertised to do. 

Wide Open (Learning) Spaces

            This week’s topic was about learning spaces. It involved by the physical and technological “space” children can learn in. This article gives a pretty good summary about the physical learning spaces. These flexible learning spaces really do encourage learning and engagement. In this video, the teachers and students discuss how having a room that is adaptable to change has impacted everything for the better. Students being able to collaborate and move around and act like kids while still learning really is making a difference for them. There were several other videos we watched this week that showed different types of learning spaces, and this video showed these massive structures that could be used for all different types of learning, which was amazing to me. I’ve never seen anything like it before, and my dream would be to someday be teaching in a school that allows open learning environments like these and doesn’t just want their students sitting in a desk the entire day. Another video showed a class of younger children, around the age I want to teach (early childhood), and their classroom that can be moved around and adapted by all the individual learners to accommodate their needs. This is a wonderful idea and something I hope I can adapt to my own classroom regardless of the school district I’m in.

            Google Apps for Education is a great resource for the digital portion of a flexible learning. This webpage gives a brief overview GAFE, but it’s basically an education based way of using google apps such as gmail and google docs. I think it could definitely be used in the classroom and help develop learning space. It can be accessed by anyone at any time, which is a difference from the standard eight hour day that students can contact their teacher in now, only while they’re at school. It facilitates a more open, inviting, and accommodating learning environment than ever before.

            As we design future learning spaces, we should question the traditional eight hour school day. I know I did it for 13 years, but the thought of it now exhausts me. Knowing that there are different ways that children learn, there’s a chance that someday, the school day could change. It might still be an eight hour day, but part of it might include distance learning. Even if it is still an eight hour day of school, we should question the structuring of the school day. Like mentioned in the topic video with Brueck this week, is 8 hours of switching classes every 45 minutes necessary? Possibly not. As seen in this video we watched, this is a nontraditional high school that is innovative and doing things in a completely different yet seemingly very successful manner. A full day spent sitting at a desk doing worksheets is just not what the future holds in education, nor should it be.

            As for the University of Akron, I am not on campus for almost anything other than my classes. The more open learning spaces I’ve observed are tables in the library for working with peers, along with the study rooms that one can reserve in the library that you can work with someone in. These are for one’s personal time. In class, there is very little room or even ability to move around and collaborate the way seen in the videos this week. I personally tend to work alone, so I’ve had no issues with Akron’s campus, but someone who needs collaboration could definitely have an issue with the way Akron’s campus and most classes are set up. It’s build for traditional schooling, with a teacher at the front of the room lecturing, not for working together with your peers. 

Cool Tool Week Eight - Prezi

            This week, the cool tool I chose to work with was a presentation tool everyone has seen before – Prezi. It was always given as an option in my classes for making presentations, but I always went with a standard PowerPoint. Prezi is a website that you can use to make presentations that are similar to PowerPoints, but look a little cooler. It is also stored online rather than on your computer making them accessible from anywhere, though you can still download them. In order to make a Prezi presentation, you must make a free account. There are paid accounts that have more features available, but that shouldn’t be necessary for the average person. The biggest difference between free and paid accounts is that all the Prezis you make with a free account are public, and cannot be made private. Prezi is available on both the App Store and the Google Play Store, though I'm not sure if the features would be any different.

            Prezi is a very cool thing. I’ve always been intrigued by it, but never had the push to actually go out and use it until now. I made two Prezi presentations. The first was a short and easy one I made to introduce myself to the website, and it was about E-books, this week’s topic.

           The second one I made was pretty much my major project blog post from this week summarized.

            I think Prezi could easily be used in the classroom. It definitely fulfills the technology part of TPACK. As I stated earlier, it has always been an option when making presentations as an alternative to PowerPoints. It is customized, and instead of being individual slides, it’s one big “slide” that zooms in on the information being presented. It could be used by the teacher when presenting something to the classroom, or by a student making a presentation.

            This tool would be used because it is an easy to aid one’s teaching. Since you want several different ways to give information to keep the class fresh and not boring or stale, a Prezi could be an alternative to doing traditional PowerPoint slides to give information. I would use Prezi because it is user friendly once you get a grasp on it, and it’s honestly just more fun to do and look at than a PowerPoint, or really almost any other way to present information to students.

            I believe it could definitely be used by students, but maybe not until they’re older. I had to google how to do things a few times, and there is a bit of a learning curve that I think would be difficult for younger students. Once students get to an age where they are writing papers and giving presentations, I believe Prezi would definitely be an option, especially for people that don’t have PowerPoint, because Prezi is free to use.

            Prezi is a great tool. It’s free to use, can be used by anyone that can use a computer, and is a good alternative to paid presentation options such as PowerPoint. 

Major Project Week 1 - Getting Started on Calligraphy

                 When I was about nine years old, I went to the public library in downtown Akron with my grandma. In the children’s section, I got a book about calligraphy. If you google calligraphy, you get the definition “the art of producing decorative handwriting or lettering with a pen or brush.” Simply put, it’s pretty writing. When I got the book, I didn’t realize you needed special pens and paper to learn how to do it, so it went untouched and returned. For my major project, I’m going back to calligraphy and finally learning how to write in it.

            I’ve done some googling, and found a subreddit on reddit.com completely about calligraphy, with a FAQ that was very helpful. It says it can take 1-2 months of daily practice to become intermediate at calligraphy, and years to master. Working full time and also being a full time student, I’m obviously not going to have the time to dedicate every single day to learning calligraphy. My goal is to become proficient – able to make the letters well and do some writing without issues. I hope I can keep up practicing following this class, because my mom is getting married in May and I’d love to be able to help her make things she needs in a pretty script (calligraphy jargon for font).

I made a word cloud using Tagul full of words about calligraphy in the shape of a calligraphy pen. It's small, but I think it's pretty good and is a nice example of what I'm trying to do, make art with words.

            To prepare for this project, I got on amazon and searched calligraphy for beginners. What I ended up buying was this book. It included a beginners guide, some paper, and pens. The reviews said the pens weren’t the best, and since I’m not looking to go into professional calligraphy anytime soon, I just bought a set of sharpie calligraphy markers to get started. 

There is a lot of supplies needed if you are truly dedicated to writing in calligraphy, but being kinda broke like most people my age, I just got the essentials to get me started. Here we go! 

E-books in The Classroom

This week’s topic was about e-books. I'll be the first to admit that I usually am not the most engaged viewer of the weekly topic videos, but this one was truly awesome, for lack of a more accurate word. I’ll also be the first to admit I wasn’t sure how I felt about e-books in the classroom – the technology to make them could be expensive if you’re using iPads, younger students might have a hard time with the technology, etc. – but this week’s topic video make me do a complete 180. Jon Smith’s e-books he has made with his classes are phenomenal. He turned kids that hated school into the biggest fans of writing, which is so inspiring.

In the Topic video this week and in the two articles we read about Smith’s special education classroom, it was amazing to me how his students didn’t want anything to do with writing, and as soon as they started writing books, they couldn’t stop. I believe students publishing books for the world to read is definitely a great motivator, and could engage even the most unwilling of children once positive feedback starts coming their way from strangers in the form of downloads. You can involve them for every part of the writing process for anything like John did with his class – brainstorm some ideas, write a rough draft, edit, repeat until the book or whatever you’re writing is done and it’s published. This could be integrated for almost any subject type. Write a book about math like Smith’s school did, or a science book like the kindergarten class did about bats. It could be a game changer for exciting the students, and making them really loving their work.

Using e-books could be beneficial in any classroom. I definitely am seeing a place for it in my future classrooms. I’m going to be teaching early childhood, and have always struggled thinking about how to integrate technology into a classroom of such young children. This struggle was quelled by Smith’s website with all of his e-books, however. There were many books by young classes about things such as shapes, animals, and food. I don’t have a Mac or iPad (though this video about Book Creator for the iPad is tempting me to the thought of getting an iPad), so I was unable to access it, but one of the books description said they took pictures then wrote a sentence about that picture using capital letters and periods. Even with the youngest children I could use books to help with grasping concepts like that. The main consideration I’ll have to make is if what I’m doing is truly helpful to my students, or if I’m using technology just to use technology. I’ll have to ensure a healthy balance of different ways to teach things and not overdue the e-books that I’m currently so thrilled about the concept of. Another issue is just parents not being sure about their children being on the internet at such a young age, which is something that can hopefully be solved with internet safety talk and permission slips.

           

The most striking thing about Smith’s presentation to me was the fact that over the last two and a half years, his e-books had close to 25,000 downloads, and possibly exceeding that since the topic video was recorded. Those 25,000 downloads have been in al but three countries that iTunes sells to. I know that in this class that we constantly are talking about sharing worldwide, but hearing that figure made me realize it is truly worldwide. Almost every country that these books can be downloaded in has downloaded at least one. That’s incredible, and I’m sure young students would think so even more than I do. I’m thrilled about the possibilities that this presents.

Cool Tool - Tagul

This week for my cool tool, I used tagul.com to make a word cloud. You must make a free account to use this website. There is an option for a premium account so you can download word clouds in higher resolution and have no ads. Using words you choose, either by typing them in or importing them, it creates a shape with them, usually something that is part of a general theme. You can choose the color, the font, and the size of the words. You can also choose the shape the words you choose are in, whether the words will repeat or not, any animations, and with the orientation of the words within the shape. These word clouds can be saved to your computer, printed, or even printed onto things such as t shirts to be purchased.

I made two word clouds. The first one I made was just getting used to the website and how to use the tools. I chose to use my name as the focal point that repeated to fill in the shape I chose, and things I love as the other words in the word cloud.

The second word cloud I made was a bit easier since I had a hang of the software. It was a word cloud comprised of Ed Tech terms, with Ed Tech as the central repeating idea. I went through the weekly Share Your Thoughts, and made a word cloud of the central term used each week. I put them in a shape of the globe, as Ed Tech is all about sharing. 

I believe this could be used in the classroom very easily. It can be a way to organize parts of something a whole idea. In my future Early Childhood classrooms, I could create a word cloud with about me items for students, or as a big chart of classroom rules. Beyond simple ideas such as those, if you “google word clouds in the classroom” you get 549,000 hits. The first hit is this weblink, https://21centuryedtech.wordpress.com/2012/05/21/108-ways-to-use-word-clouds-in-the-classroom-word-clouds-in-education-series-part-2/, with ideas such as a course outline at the beginning of a school year with your outline on it. This could be beneficial in the classroom because a lot of students are visual learners. When they see something laid out in a pattern like these, it can really bring together concepts for children. Visual aids can benefit everyone.

This app could easily be used by older students. Younger students might struggle with using it, and benefit more from the final product. It is slightly confusing to use, such as how exactly you make the word cloud is unclear. There isn’t a guide that I was able to easily find on how it works. When I googled how to use it, all I got was a FAQ, which didn’t answer some of my questions.

Word Clouds are a wonderful tool both inside and out of the classroom, and can benefit anyone using them.

Copyright, Creative Commons, and Fair Use in The Classroom

This week, we had two Weekly Topic Videos from YouTube, CreativeCommons & Copyright Info and Understanding "Fair Use" in aDigital World. These two videos were all about copyright, creative commons, and fair use. As a future educator, knowing about what I can and can’t do with someone else’s work is so important, because the internet makes sharing and using things you find seem effortless and that you can do it without a second thought. I never knew that if someone creates and posts content, they automatically own a copyright to it. I thought it was something you needed to apply for. I also didn't know that creative commons licenses were free and could be as restrictive or not restrictive as the creator wants it to be. 

            In my future classroom, I need to make sure that I am only using things I have a legal right to use. I know as a future early childhood education educator websites like Pinterest have a lot of ideas, and I need to do my best to make sure anything I download for use in my classroom is something the original content source has permission to post, along with myself having permission to use it as well in the way that I intend to use it. There are also certain rules regarding copyright in the classroom. I knew teachers had a bit more leeway than others with fair use, but the University of Akron's library has this guide that lays out some of the specifics that I thought was very helpful regarding classroom exceptions, such as using things in the classroom but not anywhere else in a school, and things can be performed or displayed, but not passed out/distributed. 

            As for my students, I know at that young of an age there isn’t going to be too much worry with them violating any copyright laws, because I doubt at the early childhood level there is going to be too much opportunity for them to even do so. The beginning of that stage however could be in the third grade, the tail end of early childhood where sometimes students start doing reports. When it comes to that point, I would explain that using things without the owner’s permission is stealing, and that stealing is wrong and we cannot do it and be respectful citizens in our classroom. One of the required readings this week was this page about Teaching Copyright, which lays out a curriculum, including work sheets, about teaching copyright, which could definitely come in handy with older students that actually need to know the rules regarding copyright. 

            The biggest thing I see an issue with regarding copyright is the illegal downloading of music, movies/tv shows, and pictures. I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve never really seen the big deal – they make so much money already, it’s so easy, what’s the impact of one download? The problem is that many other people share that attitude, and it can spiral out of control and the creator of the content loses out on a lot of possible money because of it. Like I said previously, it is stealing, it just doesn’t really “seem” as bad as, say, stealing a physical copy from Best Buy seems. With my students, I can explain that they’re really hurting the people they’re stealing from if things are illegally downloaded, because it can prevent them from making money and living their lives. Hopefully that plants the seed that in the future, they need to make sure they are only using/downloading things on the internet they have the right to.

Week Six Cool Tool Review, bubbl.us

This week, the cool tool I chose to review was bubbl.us. It is a concept mapping tool. You start with a central bubble, and can make bubbles off of that, and off of those ones, and so on. You can save the concept maps on the website, or export them as a picture. It is free to use, but there are upgrades you can pay for. They do have an iOS app along with their website.

The website is very easy to use. I made my free account, then began. I started with my central bubble, then made the bubbles off of it, and so on. You can change the color of the bubbles, or of the text, which makes it customizable.

I made two concept maps. The first one is very simple. I’m currently in another class called Understanding Literacy Development and Phonics, and a very important concept is phonological awareness. I made a concept map of the things that make up phonological awareness that I can use to help study. It is somewhat small, making it harder to read. If you click on it, it is much bigger easier to read.

Another concept map I made was a more fun one. It was about Harry Potter books. I started with the central idea of Harry Potter, branched off into each book, and then summarized each book. They were very quick summaries, missing a lot of detail. It could go much more in depth, listing things such as characters, setting, plot, etc. It has the same issue with being small and harder to read on the blog post, but when it is clicked it becomes a lot easier to read.

This tool could easily be used in the classroom. I personally am using it as a student making the map about phonological awareness. The Harry Potter map can also be used in the classroom. You could have a child make a concept map about anything. They could make it about a book they read. They could do a map about major historical events. They could do a map about a science concept. The possibilities are endless. This can be both the technology and pedagogy part of TPACK. In my Introduction to Exceptionalities class, a class about special education, we learned that graphic organizers are a very effective way to teach and help students tremendously. As a teacher I could make graphic organizers to pass out to students to help them understand something by understanding how things relate to each other, or I can have students make them for me so I can assess their understanding.

This could easily be used by students, as shown by my maps. I could predict there being a bit of a learning curve about how to operate the website as first, because I did need to read their help page. Once I did that, it was easy to use. Most of the map is made through typing, which could be an issue if a student has typing problems.

Overall, I really think this tool could be used effectively and easily in the classroom, as long as a child is able to read and write and type. In a kindergarten class, this wouldn’t be able to be used the way it would in a high school class. Younger children might not yet have the ability to bounce concepts off of each other and type them out in a concept map.