CourseEmbeddedAssignments

EDLD 5306 Concepts of Educational Technology According to the 2009 Texas Star Chart Data Roberts Elementary is rated developing in the following domains: Teaching and Learning Educator Preparation and Development

As an International Baccalaureate school, Roberts teachers strive to educate students through an inquiry driven model. The use of technology hinges on which path the students take the learning experience during their investigation of the inquiry areas. The teachers then have the daunting task of forseeing the technology that will be needed as well as being comfortable integrating them into the curriculum prior to instruction.

I was very surprised to find that though our campus has been identified by TEA as an exemplary school for the past 3 years, it is rated as developing in two technology domains. This exemplifies the priority that schools give to technology versus the curriculum that is assessed by standardized tests. The rating is derived from a self-survey completed by campus teachers. Accordingly, it suggests that our teachers feel they have room to improve in their ability to teach with technology. The second standard that fell short is likely the cause of the former. Lack of sufficient professional development is a major area of concern for many campuses, our included. This particular shortcoming creates a domino affect toppling all other technology integration efforts.

EDLD 5333 Leadership for Accountablity

**Goal:** Our campus will continue to perform at the exemplary level in reading and make improvements each year. Roberts Elementary will work carefully to maintain the reading skills of all students, but make a focused effort ensuring that 95% of the African American and Economically Disadvantaged populations meet or exceed the state standards for the Reading TAKS this year and each following year, so that those population’s scores are consistently comparable to those of the entire school. || 21 weeks=$5040 || Bi-weekly review of student work and assessments. || Ongoing for specialist collaborations. || Staff-provided professional development. || Review of lessons created during professional development session. ||
 * **Objective:**
 * **Target Group(s): All students, African American students and Economically Disadvantaged Students** ||
 * **Activity/ Strategy (Include 3)** || **Person(s) Responsible** || **Timeline** || **Resources/Estimated Cost** || **Formative Evaluation** ||
 * 1. Time for Reading – Students will have an uninterrupted block of 90 minutes each morning devoted to reading and language arts instruction. There will be an aide in the classroom to facilitate small group instruction. || All teachers, aides and specialists || Aug. 2010 – May 2011 || Need 1 additional teacher’s aides to facilitate 15 minutes of small group instruction for every k-5 class. (7.5 hours per week @$15.00 for 36 weeks=$4,050) || 2 walk-throughs followed by timely email feedback. ||
 * 2. The school will form an intervention team. Teachers will refer students that are making slow/ no progress. The parents of the students will meet with the intervention team to discuss intervention strategies. The students will receive extra instruction in an afterschool program. Their progress will be reviewed bi-weekly. || Selected Intervention team members and All 3-5 classroom teachers || Oct. 2010 – Feb. 2011 || 2 Tutors will be hired at the rate of $12.00 per hour for 10 hours each week for
 * 3. The school will use data from TAKS and benchmarks to drive instruction. The staff will participate in professional development to improve instructional strategies. The reading specialist will be provided ongoing trainings and opportunities to collaborate with specialist from nearby campuses. || Reading Specialist Pooja Shroff, school aids and specialists and all k-5 teachers. || August 2010 for professional development.

I can see from designing this professional development day the strains that administration faces when attempting to provide it's staff with effective professional development experiences. Having to make the decision to take educators out of the classroom to do follow up inservices is undoubtedly difficult, but a neccessary evil to ensure the successful implementation of the new learning strategies. Further, it takes skillful manipulation of assets to fit the trainers, subs and materials needed into the budget.

EDLD 5362 Information Systems Management

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Gradespeed and Chancery maintain the vast wealth of student information for the entire Houston Independent School District. L earning about the two programs from our registrar was a little disheartening. I found out that the new and very expensive programs also came with some new and expensive problems. According to Mrs. Sones, they didn't work quite as well as SASI (the previous program). Also, the support provided from the manufacturer was only second-hand. They required clerks to address all questions to the HISD help desk first, then they would transmit needed information back through them. This caused frustrating delays that made the process very inefficient. Further, the amount of training required to put the new program into play cost the district seemed to almost negate it's worth.

Gradespeed does provide a new feature that SASI lacked. Parents are now able to see their child's grades online as they are posted by the teacher. There is only a 10 minute delay between post and the parent being able to view. This key feature is an important one, as it makes the district compliant with the Texas Long-Range Plan for Technology.

EDLD 5363 Multimedia Video Technology

This course took a lot of ingenuity and learning on my part. It was especially challenging because it was during the summer. I had access to my school files, so I peiced together videos that I had taken of my class to complete the first assignment which required us to become familiar with video editing software. I enjoyed this task immensely because I was able to spotlight the children that motivate me to do what I do. media type="youtube" key="VOQJbtPwefI?hl=en" height="344" width="425" The second asignment asked us to use photostory to depict our journey to teaching. While my partner and I had some confusion about the end product and we both ended up making a video about my life, it was a successful assignment because we gained experience using the photostory software. I liked the motion paths that were available. I can see how it could be used to put emphasis on certain aspects of the photos being used. media type="youtube" key="WcWl4bj-XVs?fs=1" height="332" width="433" Now that I see this again, I wish I had used a more upbeat tone in my voice...

The final project was the most challenging, and also the greatest learning experience. I think the amount of trouble-shooting we had to do to make the project a reality is what made it so difficult.Our group got started on the right foot. We met in person. We had our first meeting at Panera Bread during week 3 with the intentions of just getting some ideas on the table for our PSA. Not only did we get our idea, we planned the whole video. It was a very productive meeting, to say the least. I wanted to address literacy, but it was Amy's idea to do comic books and literacy. I think that gave us a unique topic. Laura had the foresight to bring a print out of the assignment, so we were able to fill in our ideas on the spot. She typed the script up at home, emailed it to me and then I transfered that right into our pre-production proposal.

With the plan in place, we proceeded with a feeling of optimism ( or at least I did). I went into the following week on a mission to get video of my summer school kids using comics during a literacy lesson. This fit perfectly with my summer school assignment, so all that was left for me to do was get the parents permission. This was trickier than I expected. The kids in my class were in no hurry to return the permission slips to me. I had to resort to bribery. They all recieved a piece of chocolate for finally bringing them in, but that didn't happen until Thursday! I planned a full blown literacy lesson and recruited a fellow coworker to teach it so I would be free to video. I was truly impressed with her instruction skills and learned alot from that alone. Unfortunately the HD camera I used created files so large they had to be converted to the point that the quality was terribly degraded. If I had it to do over again, I would just use my digital camera.

While I was doing that, I know that my counterparts were hard at work collecting their video and audio. As soon as I got home, I started trying to send my clips to Laura, who graciously offered to be the editor because she had the superior editing software, imovie. Once again, the HD camera was my downfall. The files were so large, they were almost impossible to transmit over the internet and Laura was out of town, so burning a CD was out of the question. The file conversion website zamzar.com finally got the files to Laura. Thank God!

Post-production was all Laura. She did a wonderful job of taking the best parts of our clips and Amy's narration and squeezing it into a one minute video (she really had to squeeze too)! I revised our pre-production document and that was all she wrote. I think our team worked together really well. We all worked hard. I'd also like to add that if it weren't for Amy being online all the time to send messages between me and Laura, our communication would not have flowed as easily. media type="youtube" key="nx60_kuIUZo?fs=1" height="357" width="595" EDLD 5364 Teaching With Technology [|Teaching With Technology Project] This project was the most involved. I gained more knowledge about various web 2.0 tools while completing this group work than from any other course. As I look back now, I am astonished by what our group was able to accomplish together. Amy was the team leader and was the first to set up the web site. We (Laura, Amy and I) then used a google site to collaborate. We each used Cast's UDL lesson builder to create [|technology intergrated lessons]. We decided as a team to create a unit for the eighth grade. This idea was proposed by Amy because it was the middle ground between the high school teacher and the Kindergarten teacher. While this was a bit of a stretch from reality, I went along with the team mainly because we had worked together before and been successful. Also, I felt like I could manage whatever they asked of me in order to be a team player. The most difficult thing for me was developing lessons that were so far removed from my current teaching position. The TEKS were very unfamiliar to me and the content, though engaging, was out of my comfort zone. I enjoyed the challenge and the opportunity to see some of what the upper level students are required to learn.

These assignments really had us all over the web, from UDL to youtube, powerpoint to google sites and more. I really think that this class seperated the men from the boys. You really had to take the time to move materials between the different platforms. The [|UDL book builder]was very hard to use and I think many people would opt to use power point to make digital literature. This will allow them to have better control of the audio that is embedded for text help. It is probably the Kindergarten teacher me that is concerned with the intonation that the characters use. It probably would not be as much of an issue for middle-high school students.

When I have more time, I intend to further research UDL lesson database. I am curious to see how extensive it is and also how much it is really used by educators to share quality learning experiences .

EDLD 5365 Web Design The assignments really left me feeling less than creative. I was more than bemuse with creating a spreadsheet detailing the timeline of when my web site would be created rather than actually creating it. I can't help but wonder if web-developers really spend so much time working on such tasks or if they make a quick outline of who will do what and then get start actually making it.

I had a very hard time with the Amaya software. I didn't really understand the objective of the tasks. I did learn very important tips fromt the text for the course. I now know the importance creating simple codes that don't require viewers to download plug-ins. This will make it easier for them to use the site if they lack internet connection speeds needed for downloads. I can personally atest to the difficulty plug-ins can create because I use my smart phone for my internet connection.

 ﻿ EDLD 5366 Digital Graphics  media type="custom" key="7894177"  The lectures from the Digital Graphics course gave me fond memories of the Art History course I took during undergrad. I was very interested and engaged in reading about the elements of contrast, repetition, alignment and proportion, almost as much as my cohort enjoyed using the acronym on the discussion board. The culminating assignment was perfectly timed. As the newspaper teacher, I was able to use the knowledge I gained to support the students in my club. The resulting product was one that our entire campus was proud of. The newspaper we created with publisher appeared crisp and professional. The colors were appealing and went well with the school logo.

This course allowed me too see the need for communications and presentations to grab and maintain the reader's attention. With numerous fliers and advertisements being thrust upon parents on a weekly basis, it is imperative that the information that teachers send home be presented in such a way that it will compete effectively, and garner the attention and response required.

I was surprised that the course didn't require us to do more blogging or other online versions of communication.

EDLD 5368 Instructional Design I designed my online course with my current students in mind. I decided upon the skill of listening based on my needs based assessment. While in the midst of creating the course, however, the parents of two students came to me and asked me how they could help their child score higher in the area of listening comprehension on next year's Stanford test. Thus, I plan to make sure my entire class is aware of the assignment is available. I will also add more assignments for the students to use over the summer. My class next year will have the privilege of taking the course prior to the Stanford, which will hopefully help them to perform better. The use of this course will also give them an introduction to taking courses online. They will have the advantage of being experienced in this mode of instruction far sooner than their peers.

I will continue to create online learning courses for students and also my coworkers. I know for a fact that this will be a welcome tool for the teachers in my school because I've seen first hand how lacking knowledge in this area can be a limiting factor in certain situations. As part of our professional development, we take one hour of each of our monthly staff meetings to meet with a inquiry group. We each determined a topic that would best benefit the instruction in our classrooms and formed groups based on the topics. One of the larger groups is named "technical difficulties". Many of the members have expressed concern and displeasure about certain technical aspects of new textbooks.I have been planning to bring some ideas on online learning to the forefront such as integrating Smartboard technology during the creation of lesson plans. I am sure they would be happy to have the guidance of an online course to help them become proficient with integrating similar technologies in their classrooms.

One question I have about online course work is, how can I insure my students go through the assignments according to the outline I planned? I worry that they will not get the full benefit they would if I was taking them through the lesson in the classroom. Conversely, I would like students that have been preassessed and demonstrated mastery of a topic to have the opportunity to compact the learning and then go deeper. I guess what I would need is an online learning platform that would allow me to differentiate the learning to meet the needs of individual learners.

I will not only continue to make use of online learning to benefit my students and coworkers, but also for myself. I will search through the various online learning communities, such as TappedIn to find ways to improve my instructional strategies. Further, I will be able to create online courses which can be used by students in the classroom during literacy work stations. The independent literacy activities will designed to provide students with instant feedback. I will also create anchor activities that students can complete when they have satisfactorily completed their work. These activities will reinforce the instruction that has taken place in the classroom during the current learning unit.