Global Connections

This year I was able to reconnect with some teachers in Houston, Texas, where I am originally from and taught for years. This has been a great opportunity for me to keep up my school district and the strides the are making in technology. I have learned some great ideas through this course and collaboration with my fellow classmates. I have organized the links into categories so that when I am done I can share my portaportal will my collaborators. When my collaborators have new information, I can upload it to keep the portal current with all the new information that becomes available.

What have you learned about strategies for facilitating knowledge construction and creative thinking in either face-to-face or virtual environments? Wow that is a loaded question, it might need to be what haven't I learned so far. To this point in Capstone, we have done a lot of work on Strand 1: Creativity and Innovation, Strand 2: Communication and Collaboration, Stand 3: Research and Information Fluency and Strand 4: Critical Thinking, Problem Solving and Decision Making. There was a lot of information that was giving and learned throughout these past few weeks. Generally speaking, Stand 1 and 4 focus on students' creative and critical thinking skills. Where in contrast, Strand 2 focuses on students in collaborative groups where in Strand 3 research is more individualized. I have generally focused my research on face-to-face environments verses online environments just because of the developmental stage that my students are at as I think of integrating these strands into my classroom. The research and experience that I have gained from this class will help me to engage and collaborate with colleagues in using the technology that they have available to them and best see how it fits their teaching styles and curriculum. I am excited to see how this will flow into my daily work life.

Collaboration #6

Imagine the following scenario:

Dissatisfaction has grown in your school and/or school district about a specific practice, such as the current grading policy. Due to your reputations as technology experts, you and your partner have been asked to select a free or low cost tool for select stakeholders from the school and community to use to collaborate on alternatives to the current practice

Beth and I are going to use Google Forms to create a survey about the grading system within our school. We decided on Google Docs after researching other free online surveys like zoomerang.com and surveymonkey.com. We decided that since our district is implementing the Google Interface, including Mail, Docs, and Sites that we would get a jump start with the Forms. In the past, we used surveymonkey.com because it was free and easy to use. Some of the strengths of surveymonkey.com is that is it very straight forward and not complicated. One weakness of surveymonkey.com is that it is limited in the manipulation of the data that you receive from the survey. As we create and conduct the survey together in Goggle Forms, we will experience some of the weakness and strengths and take notes of them for our portfolio.

I would use Google Forms for my parents because it is easy with great templates to choose from. The information we gathered is put into a spreadsheet that is easily viewed and manipulated. When we use this tool in the school community, the parents will have to have access to a computer. This could be a problem for some parents, but we have a few computers available in the Parent Center as a school resource during the day. The library is always great resource for the parents when they need access to the internet and a computer until 8:30 p.m.

Our school librarian has one tool she and her students use to locate, analyze, evaluate and use information for research and learning. They use Nettrekker.com on a daily basis and it is the primary site that her classes use for research. All students in our district have assess to Grolier Online Passport, World Book, ProQuest, Gale Group, and eLibrary for their research needs. I asked the Librarian why she preferred Nettrekker.com to the other resources and she said, "I am comfortable with Nettrekker.com so that is why I use it." I suggested she try out World Book http://www.worldbookonline.com/ . I shared the research that I had done for this class and the options that were available to her and the students through World Book. She was interested in more information about it and agreed that I could come in and incorporate some of these ideas with one of her classes. I am excited to get to share some of the information I have found while completing Capstone.

Entry 1D Portifilos

I feel this standard will be a hard one for me for pre-k. I know that I can facilitate knowledge construction and foster creative thinking in a face-to-face enviroment but I am not sure how to do that in a virtual environment yet. It is hard for them to just let them go on the internet all by themselves right now. It will be very time consuming on my part going from computer to computer when they get stuck somewhere and not know what to do. It will not be very productive for their learning. They need an area where they can go section to section like starfall.com. I would just love to find something else at this point though. We always use it because it is free and creates a very productive learning environment. There is no where really to get lost because it sparkles where they need to click to go to the next section. Again, I am still researching and looking continually for another site that will be a great virtual environment for my students.

In collaboration with others in our forums, I have found a tool named http://www.kerpoof.com/ that would be great for pre-k as a collaborative tool. The students can make a storybook, make a drawing, spell a picture, make a picture, make a movie, make a card, make a story, and doodle pad. They can use this site in groups or as an individual activity. This website will promote student reflection, planning and creative thinking in pre-kindergarten.

For promoting student reflection, I can see that the students using make a picture or make a drawing or doodle pad. For pre-k it is going to best to let them reflect creatively in a drawing when working individually. They will be able to do that without a lot of assistance from me.

When they are planning as a team, this site will help them to gather ideas with the the make a drawing, spell a picture, and doodle pad. This will give them all a chance to work together and maybe come up with some words that they can put together with the spell a picture section. This website will help with creative thinking either in group or individual work time.

A Says /a/

This is done for the formative assessments Then summative assessments will take these voki.com avatars and the will be put up on the Wall of Sounds on wallwisher.com