Journal 7- Professional Learning Networks

I see professional learning networks as a valuable resource.  As teachers many of us have been sharing ideas in the hallways and in lunchrooms for years.  Fairly recently a whole new world of sharing possibilities has opened up with not only professional learning networks , but also with sties like Teachers Pay Teachers and Pinterest.  These new opportunities save time and expand our pool of resources exponentially, ultimately to the benefit of the learners.

I use Teachers Pay Teachers often as a go to for already prepared materials.  My students recently wanted to learn about horses, so rather than spend days learning about horses myself and developing a unit, I was able to easily access many well developed units on TPT.  This is a very affordable time saver.  Also, I needed a new, cute Thanksgiving project to do with my class.  Pinterest is my go to for finding tons of easy and creative projects to do with my class.   I just can’t believe all of the great ideas and materials we all have access to now!

On my Digg feed, I found myself mostly looking at a site called “A Place Called Kindergarten” and “Chalktalk: A kindergarten Blog.”  I would get lost in these sites because there are so many ideas and one leads to another.  Before I know it an hour has passed and I hadn’t gotten to other feeds.  I love having a list of feeds to refer to, however I lack time to look into most of them.  With these feeds the searching is more open ended than sties like TPT and Pinterest where I can search for the topic I need and not get lost in all of the other ideas.

Classroom 2.0 is the affinity group I joined.  I found some posts to be inspirational and reassuring as a teacher and in reflecting on the profession.  Overall, I found the site itself to be overwhelming.  I searched fairly long and often, and found mostly resources for older students.  There could be more for primary students that I didn’t find.  I also like the offerings of webinars.  I can see myself participating in these after I get all of my graduate work done.

Through using a blog in this 512 class, I can see how it would be a valuable resource for teachers to have their students hand in work.  It’s easy for a teacher to click and view the students’ portfolios of blog posts, which can contain texts, images, videos etc.  There is also a record of interaction with other students through responses.  I could see using this or an app like Edmodo for this purpose.
Of all of the tools we tried in this class, I spent the least amount of time with Twitter.  I know there are others like it, like Kik and Instagram.  A tool like this could be interesting to use on a field trip.  A teacher could possibly design and interactive activity like a treasure hunt with a tool like this.  I could see that being really engaging for the students!

Journal - Reflection

In high school, way back in the 80’s, I learned Pascal in a class and loved it!  I thought it was really cool that I could put in code and this picture would appear.  It came easily to me and I enjoyed it.  At the time, it didn’t seem like something to pursue, I guess because it was a time when computers weren’t prevalent. 

Flash forward a couple of decades and I am taking a web design class and loving it.  Don’t get me wrong, it is challenging for me, but I feel like I am in my zone of proximal development and learning with a lot.  All of the bits and pieces are coming together and making sense.  A true sign of this to me is that I am able to trouble shoot code and understand it.

One of the hardest assignments for me were the Jen’s kitchen assignments, it was challenging for me to link to other recipes and back to the home page.  This really helped me with understanding file structure and how I want to organize my files, as well as understanding the necessity of having a consistent file naming system.  One example at http://www.csupomona.edu/~lthester/512/bookexercises/ch6_files/ex6-7%20index.html

The most rewarding assignment so far, because it too was challenging for me, has been the final Tuscany page for ch.7.  It is just such an aesthetic pleasure to have linkable thumbnails and back to home links that work. (That sounds really geeky!)  The challenging part of this assignment was the way I had the files stored and the names I gave them.  At some point I changed the names or moved the images and they didn’t link anymore.  This happened a few times as I was becoming more proficient and efficient with file storage and file naming.  Example http://www.csupomona.edu/~lthester/512/bookexercises/ch7_files/

The assignment that shows my growth and that I am most proud of at this point is the last one.  I was able to make a home page out of my About Me page and link to book assignments and a page with a table that has links to my labs.  AND I was able to load it all onto the Cal Poly server with all links working.  One of my goals is to make the book links into a table with CSS as well.  I know now how I would name and organize files differently, but at this point I don’t want to change anything because it is working.  It's not fancy, but I'm proud I understood how to do it! http://www.csupomona.edu/~lthester/512/labs/first.html

Journal 5 Twitter

Prior to the assignment to sign up for a Twitter account, I had no desire to have one.  Honestly, I still don't.  I signed up, which was an easy process.  I chose the first 5 recommended Twitter friends that I thought would be entertaining to follow.  I don't have any friends on Twitter.  Well now I do...sort of.  I am Twitter friends with Barack Obama, Kerry Perry, Miley Cirus and a couple of more.  I received two tweets!  One was a vague thank you sort of message from President Obama himself, I'm sure.  Ms. Perry also shared a picture of her BFF Miley dressed up for Halloween. 

As far as Twitter being a tool for education goes, I'm not sure.  None of the K-6 students I know use it.  None of the friends of my Middle school age son use it either.  I assume many people do though because I hear so much about it.  From what I understand of how it works, it sounds like it could be used in the classroom.  I would use it for group responses to a topic.  For this I prefer a private social media site like Edmodo.

So, thanks for the experience, but Twitter is not for me for now!

Journal 4

Hi Friends,
This is a very rough plan for my classroom website.  I developed a needs analysis survey to find out what type of information is most important to the families in my classroom.  When I have these results, I'll know more about the specif links, buttons, etc.  I plan on the theme changing with our curricular theme at the time.  So for now, this is the rough plan!  Text answers are below the photos.

Site Title:  Not sure, may have students vote.  Something like Welcome to Room 7 or Sycamore_________’s.

Developer:  Lenora Hester

Rational/Focus:  The classroom website will serve as a means of communication with families.  I will use a needs analysis survey to determine what content is most important to the families.

Main Features:  Buttons will link to pages with content based on the needs analysis.  There will be  a photo slideshow of kids in action and text to describe the photos and current theme.

Content:  a themed home page will link to separate pages such as calendar, homework, ways to help your child, learning website links, a kid news page, etc.  This will depend on the parents’ responses to the needs analysis.

Target Audience:  My classroom families and students. 

Design Considerations:  The design will be based on current classroom theme such as, arctic animals. 

Limiting Factors:  I anticipate some limitations with some families being able to access the website on outdated computers.

Journal 3

The Case for Social Media in Schools

“Don’t fight a losing battle,” says Delmatoff  As teachers, we ought to take advantage of the fact that we can facilitate our students’’ usage of social media. Using social media in the classroom is a perfect opportunity to talk about what is right and wrong.  Use it as a talking point.  (This is what we do as parents, right?)

I also agree that there is a lot of power in this statement, “Blogging was a way to get students into that mode where, 'Hey, I’m writing this not just for an assignment, not just for a teacher, but my friend will see it and maybe even other people [will] stumble across it,” especially for the tween group.  Students care most about what their peers think at this age, and knowing that there work is up there for peer review may be extra incentive to do their best work.  I would imagine that if they can access their blogs at home, students would come back to their work more often to improve it.   In fact, students can collaborate much more easily from their homes using a social media sight. In addition, reading and commenting on other people’s blogs is very motivating to practice reading and writing skills in a natural context.

I do feel strongly that teachers should use self -contained sights such as Edmodo to control the external influences.  Given all of the benefits, and the fact that social media isn’t going anywhere, I think that we should take full advantage of the educational possibilities.  

What additional benefits do you see in the case of using social media? 

Additional benefits include offering a mode of communication to those who may too shy to speak out in class, as well as offering everyone an equal chance to voice their point of view.  Also, there is an automatic record of student participation, this has always been hard to document as a teacher.  For example, if students are contributing to a literature discussion, there is a record of the discussion and the participation of the contributors.   

Do you use social media in the classroom?

No, I don't currently use social media with my Kindergarteners and First graders.  I may begin to be able to as the first graders become more strong in their reading and writing skills.  I'd be interested in ideas for this grade level.  Having taught upper grades as well. I definitely see ways that I would incorporated social media into our work, such as in the literature circle example I mentioned above.

Journal 2

Blog Post 2

Affinity Group and Digg Stream

I joined Classroom 2.0.  I chose it because of it’s Education and technology emphasis. Also, it has a lot of members so I figured it must be good!  There is a plethora of information about webinars, virtual conferences, lessons and more and most or all is free.  This week I applied and got accepted, then customized my page. I also searched around.  Many people post valuable links to additional content.  It’s a bottomless pit! (In a good way).

Here is a link to my Classroom 2.0 Page:

http://www.classroom20.com/profile/LenoraHetser

The Digg Stream is a lot like Classroom 2.0 in that it there is an overwhelming amount of information out there.  I signed up for educational sights, as well as some new sights.  I like having my sources of information in one place.  It is also really helpful to have a backlog of articles to read when I have time.  I learned that a lot of teachers love teaching kindergarten, and I got a ton of ideas for my own classroom!  I look forward to having all of my favorite bloggers’ ideas in one place.

Here is a link to my Digg stream:

http://digg.com/reader/feed/http%3A%2F%2Faplacecalledkindergarten.blogspot.com%2Ffeeds%2Fposts%2Fdefault

Where will you find the time to read and research all of this information available to you?

I don’t know.  It would be nice to have some professional development time to dedicate to researching lesson ideas and current research of what works in education.  I will suggest to my K/1 team that we use one of our 2 meetings per month, or part of one, to start doing this.  It is helpful to be able to access Classroom 2.o0 and my Digg stream on multiple devices, so I can check in on the go.

What do you think of attending virtual conferences and webinars?

I have always wanted to attend a webinar.  I was a moderator for a virtual conference for the 2013 Spring Graduates at the EMM Graduate Symposium.  That was a really great experience.  The presenters were all over the United States and there were some attendees from out of the country.  There were were, all in one virtual room, enjoying the presentations!  I will try to attend some through the Classroom 2.0 recommendations.

Journal 1

Saturday, October 5, 2013

Journal #1:  Niederst, Robbins Jennifer. Learning Web Design: A Beginner's Guide to HTML, CSS, Javascript, and Web Graphics. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly, 2012. Print.

Summary:

Web design usually involves teams of designers, each with a specific job.  There is an interaction designer, User Experience Designer and a Visual/ Graphic Designer, as well as multimedia developer, content strategist and information architect.  A web designer must always have the user in mind.  O’Reilly distinguishes between frontend design and backend development.  Frontend design has more to do with how the user will see and use the page, while backend development has more to do with the programming and server management. 

HTML:  A markup language, which sets up the structure of the webpage.

CSS:  Is responsible for how the webpage looks.

JavaScript is a programming language that is responsible for what a webpage does.

The web is a way of sharing information in addition to file transfer and email.  The internet is the network of computers.  Servers allow sharing, or communication between computers. A domain name links to an IP address,  to be found on a server.  A URL is a pages address.  The source document contains text and HTML and CSS mark ups to define how the page will appear.  The graphics are accessed by the mark ups, such as in the Jen’s Kitchen example.

There is a lot to consider when designing webpages these days.  There are many different devices that it will be viewed on, with a few different ways to connect.  As designers, we also need to consider how the user will be viewing the page.  Are they in a hurry?  Are they sitting at a desk?  Do they have a small phone screen or a large monitor?  Sticking with the W3C standards will help to ensure uniformity.  Using the progressive enhancement strategy is one way to help with differing browser capabilities.  The designer starts with a very basic page that can be accessed by all, then adds layers of complexity.   Responsive web design uses CSS to allow the page to open in different ways depending on the size of the screen, therefore allowing for optimal user experience.

The Web Accessibility Initiative was started to ensure Web access for all.  For example, users with vision problems can use screen readers and users with limited use of their hands can use altered keyboards etc.

Would I be more of a frontend Designer or a Backend Developer?

I definitely find myself more drawn to frontend design.  As a frontend designer, I would need a good eye for design, as well as solid knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.  In addition, knowing about server side programming and database management would be beneficial.

What was the most interesting information you learned from this reading?

I found the explanation of how webpages and the web work to be very helpful and easy to understand.  I also learned that responsive web design can make pages easier to read on the iPhone, by breaking up the elements, and allowing them to be viewed larger without too much scrolling around.