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.