Millennial Age

First may I suggest you find your own Millennial Age Here

My Millennial Age was 79! This means to me that I am pretty Millennial but not the most Millennial you can be. The test gave many questions to see how close to Millennial you are in the way you think basically. The Millennial age is an age with "confident, self-expressive, liberal, upbeat individuals who are open to change. They are more ethnically and racially diverse than older adults. They’re less religious, less likely to have served in the military, and are on track to become the most educated generation in American history." I think my answers to the questions of religion were most likely different then the Millennial Age so thats why my score went down some. I text, use the computer regularly for school (but I dont play video games), I watch probably an hour of tv a day (with my son in the morning), and I am open to diversity. Pretty Millennial if you ask me :) Though my parents are Millennial in the fact that they are very tech savvy and text their views on Military, Religion, and Politics are very conservative which I think are less "Millennial" or different then the majority of today's people (the Millennials). I think that is most likely why I am the way I am today!

Voki

This week we made little virtual characters called Voki's to say our own personal introduction. We could use this in the classroom if we wanted to build a virtual tour of some place we could not physically go as a class. We could use them at meeting to guide people though a power point etc. The list is unlimited! Here is the google doc with the text of my self introduction. 

Self Intro Public Google Doc

Using a Voki to communicate information for you would surely fall under the NETS T standard 3C which states: Communicate relevant information and ideas effectively to students, parents, and peers using a variety of digital age media and formats! Voki is a cool variety of digital media! 

Here is my Voki that will read you the text that is in that Google Doc. 

Wordle

Wordle.net is a great tool for visual learning and I think all learners in general. We were asked to look at NETS T standards for both 2000 and 2008 and compare how the two differed and our thoughts on why. Here are my two wordles.

Year 2000:

 

Year 2008:

 

 As you can see by clicking the images the 2 biggest words in 2000 were Technology and Teachers. The two biggest words in 2008 were Learning and Digital. You can see a shift from 2000 to 2008 that learning became the most important part of the standards. Learning technology not just being in a class with technology. We are in a digital age and computers and other digital things are becoming so important. 

I have thought about a number of ways I could use this in my classroom! I could have students pick an important speech by someone in history and do a wordle. I could have them pick their favorite song or a song that went along with what we are learning and have them make a wordle. I could even have them type their own writing into wordle and they can see what words show up the most! Here is a wordle I made for Dr. King's "I have a Dream speech." We are learning about famous Americans right now and the students loved seeing this!

 

I believe that having students create wordles hits the very first NETS T standard: facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity though technology! Using wordle promotes creativity and innovating thinking because they can deduce why certain words showed up. We could even have a contest where I show different wordles and they try and guess what speech or writing it came from!

Webinar Thoughts

This week I watched/listened to a Webinar about education in the age of mobilazion! Here are the question that were to be considered and my thoughts on them! 

How prepared are you to engage in each type of learning (Carpe Diem vs St. Marys)?  

So the Carpe Diem way of teaching was having each student at a computer for half the day and drilling them on the computers. I dont think its very hard not to be prepared for that because you as the teacher to me seems like you are not facilitating the learning (the computers are). The St. Marys way of using technology was that the technology was a tool in hands on learning or "learning by doing." I think this is how I have been prepared at Shenandoah to teach and is what my professors stress! It is so important to integrate lots of hands on learning in the classroom and use smart phones or the mobile technology to enhance the curriculum so more learning can be achieved. 

 

If you not in the class now, what would you suggest teachers in your field adopt based on current knowledge of mobile/wireless devices. 

I would suggest to teachers in my field (elementary school) should adopt the use of mobile devises in the classroom. Students are excited by this technology and based on the webinar mobile is going to become bigger than the internet. How awesome would it be if students had their phones with aps on them which enhanced their learning. Information would be right at their finger tips creating an environment were students can problem solve on their own!

 

What would you recommend in terms of a school wide initiative to improve teaching and learning at this point if you were in a position to do so? 

I think I would recommend that school invest in mobile learning rather then more "computer labs." When you have a computer lab you have to sign out times and can only be in the computer lab for a limited amount of time. Imagine if the technology was right in the classroom and in the hands of all the students where they could gain information and maybe even more information then they could from the computer lab. The statistics and research given in the webinar showed that mobilism is the way our society is moving and thus i think it should be emphasized in the schools. 

 

A mixture of the 2 models (Carpe Diem vs St. Marys) is probably in everyone’s future. How do you see executing your version of the blend in your field?

My blend is more towards the St. Marys side of learning by doing and I though I know some teachers dont think there is enough time for hands on learning I think that if I integrate subjects and create projects that hit more then one SOL in more than one subject that I will be able to support my students by doing hands on learning. (much better than having them sit and be drilled at a computer I think!)

T Test

This week we used the same data about 4th grade math to conduct a T Test to see if there was a significant difference between male and female test scores. After doing the T Test on excel I found that there was no significant difference between the two (accepting the null hypothesis). I knew this because the p values were greater than .05.

 

 I do not have my own class yet but seeing how you compare male in females in a T Test I think it using a T Test to compare reading and spelling scores would be really helpful. I think using T Test to see if there is a significant difference between reading and spelling scores could help you understand if you need to spend more time on reading and spelling (and less on another subject) because the reading and spelling shouldn't be significantly different. To test this the IV: would be the amount of time you spend on reading for say a 9 week grading period (then you would change the amount the next 9 week grading period). The DV: would be how you teach the subject. You want this to remain the same. (you just want the amount of time to be different). The research question would be: Would their be a significant difference between reading and spelling if you spent less time teaching reading/spelling then the other subjects? H0: There is a significant difference between the scores on a reading test and the scores on the spelling test. H1: There is no significant difference in the scores. 

ISTE-NEST-T Standard 3D says: Model and facilitate effective use of current and emerging digital tools to locate, analyze, evaluate, and use information resources to support research and learning. Analyzing data and evaluating it by using a T Test is very fitting of this standard! 

Excel

Honestly can say this one was tough for me...I have a Mac so I really had to figure out how to make the comparisons and everything but I finally figured it out! 

I live in Virginia and I was pleasantly surprised to see that we are state 45 out of the 53 (DoDEA, National Public, and DC make up the 3 others). That means for 4th grade math Virginia is only worse then 8 states (Mass being the top state). We are above 45 states! Though our neighbor DC is the worse "state." You can see in my scatter plot where VA falls:

As you can see Virgina (highlighted in Red) is above average when it comes to these 2011 scores. This tells me that we are doing something right! We are doing things well! In order too keep these standings I think as a state we need to analyze what is working and see what the states above us our doing to get even higher scores! If we begin to fall we need to make sure that we catch the problem quickly! 

Analyzing and creating descriptive statistics from raw data is extremely important. INST NEST T standard 3D states- Model and facilitate effective use of current and emerging digital tools to locate, analyze, evaluate, and use information resources to support research and learning. 

Creating excel sheets and analyzing data will help us as teachers know where students are currently, how far they have come, and what we need to work on to get them to go even further. Evaluating and Assessment is so important to make sure we can take our students as far as we possibly can as teachers!

Website!!

So I actually made a website! I know this site will be so useful when I actually become a teacher. You can keep it updated with so many things for parents and students. I feel like it is a good way to keep parents in the loop about what is going on in your classroom which is so important! On my site I have the homepage which can link you to my introduction, curriculum, newsletter, homework calendar, and resources pages. Also on the side bar are links to my resume and a sample rubric. 

Here is Ms. Pecks Classroom!!!

I think making a website for your classroom hits many of the ISTE NST T Standards. 

3B states that we will communicate relevant information and ideas effectively to students and parents using a variety of digital formats. I think creating a website where both students and parents can gather information about the happenings of the classroom communicates relevant information though media! Also, 3D says that we will facilitate the effective use of current and emerging digital tools to locate, analyze, evaluate, and use information to support learning. I think my website does just that! It helps students locate information they need about a project or homework easily. It helps them analyze what is due when though the calendar. It helps parents evaluate my effectiveness as a teacher and use all the information on the site to further their learning!