Wicked Project Final

Powerpoint Presentation

Wicked final

View more presentations from czernelt.

Part 1

Part 2

Script:

This is Linnea Czerney, speaking to you about my Wicked Project, I apologize for the difficulty you must be having understanding me, but I have lost my voice.

As a first year teacher, in a completely new environment, I found myself struggling to have effective communication with parents. In the past, the students’ agenda has been a very useful tool, but many of my students will remove a note from their agenda, lose it, or continuously “forget” to show the note to their parent.

After completing 50+ parent teacher conferences, the need has never been clearer for more effective parent communication. This has been an ongoing process with trial and error, but I hope that the inclusion of more technology availability will help to allow parents to be more involved and more informed about their child's class as well as their performance within that course. I have tried several methods to communicate, but not through technology. This is so important because so often parents are not involved because their student does not convey the message of homework or the material we are covering in class.

I had created a website for my classroom, but had been using it for educational resources geared toward my students, rather than using it as an informational tool to communicate with parents. When realizing the problem I was having, I immediately decided to use technology to help ease the communication between parents and teachers. Although I recognize that this is not a cure all, and is virtually useless to parents without internet access, I found technology and a website to offer many solutions to this problem.

To begin, I created a survey using Google Forms to give parents input and influence in the direction of my project. The resounding results told me that these parents wanted to have access to homework pages, school information, and access to grades. With that in mind, I made several changes to my website and sent mass emails to parents informing them about the website and what was going on in our classroom.

I then took their feedback and implemented a variety of technology tools in attempts to ease their concerns.

In the survey I had parents create a code name for their student. Some parents returned the survey in paper form, and some did not fully understand the purpose of the code name. I had one student’s parent choose the name of another student in the class, and one parent give their child’s name for the code name. I then had to email them to have this changed, and include further explanation of the code names. I then used these codes to begin using engrade, per feedback, I have been practicing with this before I make it public to parents. I also wanted to get the rest of my grade level on board and they have not, so although I set up engrade and hope to use it in the future, the rest of my team would not agree on this grade level decision.

Another aspect that has not been used at all, is the feedback option I posted on the site. Parents have not used this feature at all. I have kept our class google calendar up to date on the website, and parents have referenced this as helpful in emails. In addition to the calendar, I added an “announcement” feature on the site so that they are able to have up to date important announcements.

Lastly, parents wanted access to homework assignments after students have lost them. These are posted under the homework tab, when applicable. This last week, my students did not have homework, so there was nothing to post. Through emails, parents have also mentioned that this has been useful to them.

The amount of parent communication through email has greatly increased from the use of technology, which is much easier for a teacher, who cannot make phonecalls whenever necessary with students in the classroom. Many have utilized email and informed us of this through the survey.

I have seen the amazing effects of the increased parental communication, but have also seen the aspects in which technology could not solve the problem or features that were not as beneficial as I anticipated. I have proof through my website that there has been increased use. Since beginning this project, there have only been 3 days that my class website was not accessed, and this graph illustrates the unique users that have utilize the sites features.

There is still more that I would like to develop on my website and need to continue to remind myself that technology will not fix all the problems of communication, but is an excellent aid in this ongoing process. As teacher parent communication increases, I would like to increase the tools and information that is accessible through this site. As commented through feedback for this project, I need to ensure that this is not overwhelming and I take the process one step at a time. If I bombard my parents with tools they are expected to use, it may have a negative effect.

Overall, I am very happy and satisfied with the results of my project. I have asked parents for their input about the increased technology and availability of content and information to them, and it has been greatly appreciate. Is the problem completely solved? No, but I have taken several steps in the right direction, to bridge the gap between home and the classroom.

Group Leadership Project

After our brainstorming session, our group really felt as though showing professionals how to make a Prezi using Prezi would be the best method. Since Prezi does not have a voice feature (although I think they will in the future), we needed to use jing to do a screencast to make it more accessible. By coupling auditory and visual learning, we can appeal to more professionals. Not only did we create a Prezi as we progressed through the tutorial, but I made an additional Prezi describing the process to that they are able to access more of the written script. This seemed like the best medium to present the information through. If the audio does not make sense, then hopefully they will be able to follow the steps in the video, or they can access the Prezi for a good example. We had talked about including images of other Prezi's, but time was limited. It would have been nice to have additional time to show more features, as well as examples of how teachers can best use Prezi in their classroom.

During the development, I learned a lot! Jing is a challenge for me and something that I need more practice and experience using. I realized more flaws in Jing than I did using Prezi. I was suprised that my struggles were not as much with Prezi, but actually with Jing. I really enjoy using Prezi, but also found features that I wished it had, and some that I discovered. I realized that you can schedule viewing meetings with it to share the link with others. As I mentioned, I think a voice record feature or more of a timing option would be nice. There were features that I have used in Powerpoint that I could not access with Prezi. It is also a tool that you must play with and practice as far as setting the path. In my opinion the path is the most important part - making sure that you are only showing the text you want, that you don't have too many steps, that you would have something to say at each transition, and making sure that the movement will not be a problem for your audience. Students love the movement and change of direction, but adults may not be as receptive to many twists and turns.

As for Jing, the 5 minute time limit affected me, as I ended at exactly 5 minutes. I would love to use this to record information for my students when I have a sub, but would need the sub to access multiple Jings. Another feature I wish it had was being able to edit or cut parts. It would have been nice to cut out pauses. I did really like the pause feature and being able to switch screens or take a second to regroup. It seemed too that with Jing, there is room to grow. There is the settings option, but there isn't a lot offered there. It is definitely something that would become more natural with more practice, but for this project I re-recorded a lot. At one point, I tried to record just the audio using Audacity so that I could focus more on the clicking and changing screens/adding to the Prezi while it was playing, but my microphone quality then lacked. This could be very very difficult or choppy for someone not good at multitasking.

Another challenge was the requirement of images and sound effects. In my personal style, I thought we should keep it simple without distractions, but I understand the purpose of adding that element. However, the amount of sound effects is a little overwhelming. That seems like something someone might have a few go-to sounds that they use. I listened to countless ones on several sites, but none of them seemed right to include. If I were teaching a lesson, I would use them in Jing, but for a professional development, they did not seem very professional in my opinion. That is one aspect that our group struggled with and were only able to incorporate a couple. If I were to do it again, I would really consider better use of sound effects to cater to auditory learners. I think it is much easier to incorporate sounds in a lesson, for example with a vocabulary word so that they have a sound association with that word, or even having the word as a sound effect said in a unique way.

I would definitely do another project like this for staff members to have a stand alone professional development tool, this opened my ideas to creating these for several web tools that I use on a regular basis. If I were doing this project again, I would work more on the collaboration. Our group worked really well together and all did a great job together. My group members are excellent and I have really learned a lot from them in this course, and greatly appreciate their feedback and input. If we were to do it again, I may have suggested a weekly or bi-weekly group meeting, even if it is only for 10-15 minutes, just to make certain we are all on the same page. It also would have been nice to have a more cohesive final product all together, but putting that responsibility on one person was not fair. It also turned out to be helpful to be able to access specific parts that were recorded, for example, if professional has started but just needs to hear how to create a path they do not need to sit through the entire Screencast, but rather can jump straight to that section. We decided to all work together in that respect. I would have encouraged using a more developed Prezi to progress through in our Jing. The reason this could not happen, was because of the time limit, and it would be difficult for a viewer to all of a sudden see aspects in the Prezi that were not there before, and had been added without showing the addition. It would have been nice to include more features of Prezi. I think we did an excellent job with what we have, and as we discussed, it may have been a little overwhelming to show a viewer every feature all at once.

Overall, I am very pleased with the outcome of our project and am eager to share this with staff at school who have expressed an interest in using Prezi, but need a tutorial that they can access at their own leisure. This was a great opportunity.

Group Leadership Project

Part 1 How to get started with Prezi by Lisa Napierala
http://screencast.com/t/STGZvwBV

Part 2 How to move, rotate, scale and zoom by Steve Veldman http://screencast.com/t/C8PFKglY3Svt

Part 3 How to use frames and create a path by Linnea Czerney http://screencast.com/t/GzKcHHAf

Part 4 How to invite others to view by Amanda Kain
http://screencast.com/t/8umJelEDrRr

Prezi:
http://prezi.com/hghw3c2dogey/copy-of-technology/

Professional Learning Plan

I feel that I came into this program very knowlegeable and interested in using technology in my classroom, but I think that during these courses, I have really grown in my comfort using it and my exposure to a variety of tools. As we learned new technologies, I really tried to integrate a new one weekly for my students. This course pushed me to think harder and really reflect on the effectiveness of using a specific technology. As I realized, it is not just using as many tools as you can, but really making sure that you are using them effectively. Throughout the MAET, I have integrated a large amount of what I have learned. This has been recognized by my administration, my students, their parents, and staff. As part of the teacher evaluation, technology has allowed me to take on a leadership role, presenting to staff and my principal has commended me on the utilization of technology in my classroom.

Despite my comfort, there is still a great deal of tools for me to explore and gain experience using. I have not only found the tools I use best, but also the ones I want to use, but need more practice. This has been a situation of "the more you know, the more you know you don't know." That really sums it up. I have been exposed to so many opportunities for similar purposes, it is finding what works best for you and exploring those. I have challenged myself to continue working on a weekly basis to use a new tool in some form between my ActivBoard, Ipad, flipcamera, and the internet/mobile labs. There is still so much I'd like to use. I have recently been shown the flip your classroom videos and concept, and have been greatly intrigued by that. My favorite lab was the data visualization, which exposed me to so many tools I hadn't used or heard of. It also confirmed that I have been on the right path with how many I have used and integrated into my classroom.

Jing is a tool that I really need to practice and experiment with to use in my classroom. I would say that Jing is the most challenging of the web 2.0 tools that I have used. It is difficult for me to ensure that my screens are perfect and that my narration is smooth. I created a Jing to show some of what I have done through this program and my emphasis on taking tools and learning we have done into my classroom. Again, this skill still needs work and my perfection is not where I'd like it to be (despite repeated efforts). My next steps with Jing are to record instructional references for students on specific skills we have learned, as well as brief tutorials for parents.

As a last tool for me to explore, I really wanted to work with Glogster. I have created a poster for all the web 2.0 tools I have used in this course, specifically in my classroom. Each bubble is linked to the site or my product using that tool. I fully plan to continue my exploration independently as well as through other MAET courses. I do not feel I have other staff or professionals to go to, but am eager to share what I have learned with them.