Photo Story

A Digital Story is "a form of short narrative, usually a personal narrative told in the first person, presented as a short movie for display on a television or computer monitor, or projected onto a screen " digital storytelling would help students in school by giving them tools to express themselves with media and technology in ways they would not be able to in other situations. It is an outlet in which they might feel more comfortable opening up in, and thus, their results would be better. It gives them the options to use multi-media pictures, music, and recorded voice in their digital story.

This is a digital story by students in Scott County Schools in Kentucky.

My Photo Story

WebQuest Project

Audia/Haggerty WebQuest

I felt like the idea of a WebQuest was a very powerful tool when used in a school setting. It allows students to get the same information, and in many cases more information than they would with a normal lesson plan, along with the added benefit of learning how to do research on the internet, which is a valuable skill to have in today's world.

Game Design and Learning

Scratch helps support the development of 21st century skills by its use of sharing and collaboration. As the reading says "One of the main goals of the Scratch online community is to foster the idea of learning from each other by building on other people’s ideas or projects". 

Scratch gives students the ability do be creative and inventive in making their projects, with all the different possibilities that are available.

The Scratch project that I found helps support MU.S.GMK Standard-2.1 Performing.

WebQuest Rubric

	Beginning	Developing	Accomplished	Score
Overall Aesthetics (This refers to the WebQuest page itself, not the external resources linked to it.)
Overall Visual Appeal	0 points There are few or no graphic elements. No variation in layout or typography. OR Color is garish and/or typographic variations are overused and legibility suffers. Background interferes with the readability.	2 points Graphic elements sometimes, but not always, contribute to the understanding of concepts, ideas and relationships. There is some variation in type size, color, and layout.	4 points Appropriate and thematic graphic elements are used to make visual connections that contribute to the understanding of concepts, ideas and relationships. Differences in type size and/or color are used well and consistently.  See Fine Points Checklist.	4
Navigation & Flow	0 points Getting through the lesson is confusing and unconventional. Pages can't be found easily and/or the way back isn't clear.	2 points There are a few places where the learner can get lost and not know where to go next.	4 points Navigation is seamless. It is always clear to the learner what all the pieces are and how to get to them.	4
Mechanical Aspects	0 points There are more than 5 broken links, misplaced or missing images, badly sized tables, misspellings and/or grammatical errors.	1 point There are some broken links, misplaced or missing images, badly sized tables, misspellings and/or grammatical errors.	2 points No mechanical problems noted.  See Fine Points Checklist.	2
Introduction
Motivational Effectiveness of Introduction	0 points The introduction is purely factual, with no appeal to relevance or social importance OR The scenario posed is transparently bogus and doesn't respect the media literacy of today's learners.	1 point The introduction relates somewhat to the learner's interests and/or describes a compelling question or problem.	2 points The introduction draws the reader into the lesson by relating to the learner's interests or goals and/or engagingly describing a compelling question or problem.	2
Cognitive Effectiveness of the Introduction	0 points The introduction doesn't prepare the reader for what is to come, or build on what the learner already knows.	1 point The introduction makes some reference to learner's prior knowledge and previews to some extent what the lesson is about.	2 points The introduction builds on learner's prior knowledge and effectively prepares the learner by foreshadowing what the lesson is about.	2
Task (The task is the end result of student efforts... not the steps involved in getting there.)
Connection of Task to Standards	0 points The task is not related to standards.	2 point The task is referenced to standards but is not clearly connected to what students must know and be able to do to achieve proficiency of those standards.	4 points The task is referenced to standards and is clearly connected to what students must know and be able to do to achieve proficiency of those standards.	2
Cognitive Level of the Task	0 points Task requires simply comprehending or retelling of information found on web pages and answering factual questions.	3 points Task is doable but is limited in its significance to students' lives. The task requires analysis of information and/or putting together information from several sources.	6 points Task is doable and engaging, and elicits thinking that goes beyond rote comprehension. The task requires synthesis of multiple sources of information, and/or taking a position, and/or going beyond the data given and making a generalization or creative product. See WebQuest Taskonomy.
Process (The process is the step-by-step description of how students will accomplish the task.)
Clarity of Process	0 points Process is not clearly stated. Students would not know exactly what they were supposed to do just from reading this.	2 points Some directions are given, but there is missing information. Students might be confused.	4 points Every step is clearly stated. Most students would know exactly where they are at each step of the process and know what to do next.	4
Scaffolding of Process	0 points The process lacks strategies and organizational tools needed for students to gain the knowledge needed to complete the task. Activities are of little significance to one another and/or to the accomplishment of the task.	3 points Strategies and organizational tools embedded in the process are insufficient to ensure that all students will gain the knowledge needed to complete the task. Some of the activities do not relate specifically to the accomplishment of the task.	6 points The process provides students coming in at different entry levels with strategies and organizational tools to access and gain the knowledge needed to complete the task. Activities are clearly related and designed to take the students from basic knowledge to higher level thinking. Checks for understanding are built in to assess whether students are getting it. See: Process Guides A Taxonomy of Information Patterns Language Arts Standards and Technology WebQuest Enhancement Tools Reception, Transformation & Production Scaffolds	3
Richness of Process	0 points Few steps, no separate roles assigned.	1 points Some separate tasks or roles assigned. More complex activities required.	2 points Different roles are assigned to help students understand different perspectives and/or share responsibility in accomplishing the task.	2
Resources (Note: you should evaluate all resources linked to the page, even if they are in sections other than the Process block. Also note that books, video and other off-line resources can and should be used where appropriate.)
Relevance & Quantity of Resources	0 points Resources provided are not sufficient for students to accomplish the task. OR There are too many resources for learners to look at in a reasonable time.	2 point There is some connection between the resources and the information needed for students to accomplish the task. Some resources don't add anything new.	4 points There is a clear and meaningful connection between all the resources and the information needed for students to accomplish the task. Every resource carries its weight.	4
Quality of Resources	0 points Links are mundane. They lead to information that could be found in a classroom encyclopedia.	2 points Some links carry information not ordinarily found in a classroom.	4 points Links make excellent use of the Web's timeliness and colorfulness. Varied resources provide enough meaningful information for students to think deeply.	4
Evaluation
Clarity of Evaluation Criteria	0 points Criteria for success are not described.	3 points Criteria for success are at least partially described.	6 points Criteria for success are clearly stated in the form of a rubric. Criteria include qualitative as well as quantitative descriptors. The evaluation instrument clearly measures what students must know and be able to do to accomplish the task. See Creating a Rubric.	6
Total Score				45/50

This is the Webquest Rubric for me and Jeff Audia

Web Quest Worksheet

Your Role

___Efficiency Expert

___Affiliator

_X_Altitudinist

___Technophile

Your Impressions

WebQuest	Strengths	Weaknesses
Gorillas	It strengths are that it gives a good project to think about.	It doesn't give them a starting point for research.
Shakespeare	It gives students standards on which to base their research.	Does not give an effective grading scale.
Earthquake	It gives students a list of web sites to conduct their research.	Grading scales gives to much leeway in points for students who did not do the work.
Foreign Country	It gives a web site list and a way to organize	Doesn't give a detailed explanation of what is required.
Waves & Sound	It gives lots of resources.	Difficulty level is too high.

Bernie Dodge, Department of Educational Technology, SDSU

I and the group felt that Earthquake and Shakespeare were the best two Web Quests because they both give the students a good starting point for the students to begin their research.

We both felt Waves & Sound and Gorillas were the worst two Web Quests because, for Gorillas, it didn't give a good starting point, and Waves was to hard for the level the students are on and was very dry in its delivery.

Best to us means that the students gain information and learn more from using the internet as a resource tool.

And worst means that the students don't learn more from the lesson plan and that they didn't not give a good starting point for research.

Language Blog Posting

While reading the article Are Digital Media Changing Language I was surprised by the quote "quantitative analysis of instant messaging conversations and text messages revel that abbreviations, acronyms, and even misspellings are comparatively infrequent, at least among college age students"

This took me by surprise just because of my personal experience with college age students and their messaging habits. I do not believe that digital media is destroying the ability of young people to construct sentences, because it has not yet affected the way we speak when we interact face to face. Not only is it not affecting our language skills in a harmful way, but the University of British Columbia offers a course that incorporates digital media into modern literacy.

Media Literacy Lesson Plan

Using Media Literacy in a performing arts class like music can be difficult for someone just starting out. However the more you dig into it, the more you will find that you can use. In this lesson plan you are shown how listening to albums like Paul Simon's Graceland can help students identify the music of other cultures based off of rhythm, speed, and what musical scale the song is using, and lyrics. This meets the ISTE.NETS standard 3. Research and Information Fluency giving students the ability to:

·         Plan strategies to guide inquiry

·         Locate, organize, analyze, evaluate, synthesize, and ethically use information from a variety of sources and media

·         Evaluate and select information sources and digital tools based on the appropriateness to specific tasks

·         Process data and report results

The Pros of Video Conferencing

Video conferencing is a new and upcoming technological tool that is starting to be integrated into the classroom with great results. Using video conferencing in the classroom helps teachers and students in many ways. It gives students:

·          the ability to collaborate with other people from almost anywhere in the world, thus giving them experience with people of other cultures.

·         the ability to see and speak with experts of different topics that they might not otherwise get to see.   

Using Video Conferencingin the Classroom is a web site that supports the use of video conferencing, and has different lesson plans, preparation, and resources to help the teacher use video conferencing in their classroom. It also gives excellent reasons why it should be used in classrooms, such as:

·         collaboration

·         planning

·         guest experts

·         virtual field trips

·         and team learning