Final Thoughts

I had a lot fun taking this class. I had a great group to work with that was always supportive and gave great advice. I learned a lot about technology that I can use later in the library and pass it onto teachers at my school. The thing I enjoyed the most was creating the website. I had a lot of fun doing it and look foward to creating more. It was also nice to do A webquest and learn what they were. I never had any experienec with them before and I think they can be very useful for lesson for students. The thing that I hated the most was the podcast, but I also would like to do other work with it so I know how to use it. I would also like to learn how to add video and sound together. I also had a lot of fun blogging, it was good to write things down to get them off your mind about the week. It was also nice to read other group members blogs and comment on them. I hope the school allows be to use a blog for my book club. If not at least allow me to use a Wiki for the club.

Overall, all the things in the class were great to learn and use and I am looking forward to using them in the future. That's one thing about taking classes, you hope you gain some kind of knowledge that you can use and I definately can say I did with this class. As I get back into taking more classes I hope I learn more. The next class starts Monday! I should of not taking anymore classes this summer. I need a break, Oh well it will be one less class I have to take. I will remember next summer not to take four classes.

Nice meeting everyone! Enjoy the rest of your summer!!!

Well I think I got threw the hardest part of the class which was podcasting. Don't ask me why it was so hard. It stressed me out the most though. Recording the lesson was the easiest part, once you liked your right recording. My problem though was uploading it to this blog and I still didn't figure it out. Last semster I did it and it was easy, I don't know what the difference was this time. Gabcast gives you directions on how to do it and I followed them to a T. In the process I somehow erased my best recording that had the clearest quality in my voice and music. Anyways at least its done and I'm tired of talking about it.

My podcast delt with bullying, which I think is a huge problem in schools. I used to teach a lesson on bullying the second day of class, so that the kids knew I wasn't going to put up with it and knew where I stood on the subject. A lot of students used to respond well to the lesson. Even though kids know they are hurting people when they are making fun of somebody, I really don't think they realize how bad it hurts them and the effects you could have from bullying. When you put the students in the shoes of the person being bullied though, I think they start to understand. Let them see and understand what it feels like.

Week Four

Well week four is almost over, only one more major assignment to do and it is the one I am worried about the most. I have no clue how to do a podcast. I also have no clue what I am going to do this podcast on. Everything else I have had an idea on what I wanted to do not this one. Plus I know for a podcats to be successful it has to be interesting and to the point to keep the students interest and motivate them. Otherwise whoever is listening to it is just going to turn it off and lose interest. Some people have mention doing a quiz on the podcast because students have to listen to it because their grade depends on it.

I also know that I must add a few more things to the Wiki. I always forget to add things to it even though I come across interesting websites that can be put on the wiki. How much are we suppose to add to the wiki to get credit for doing it? If anybody knows please let me know, I would appreciate it. I felt this week went pretty smooth, even with all the 4th of July parties. Plus no one in my family got hurt lighting off fireworks this year.

Hey everyone have a great weekend!

Instructional Website

Man that was really time consuming and the more I got into creating the website the more I wanted to add. It amazing there is so much that you can do with websites and instruction in your class. You can add so much more to your subject that you can't get across in a 45 minute lesson in class. Thats why this websites are so benifitional to each of your students. Plus these sites may give them extra help with their homework or just plain other resources to help them understand your subject more. The thing is to that websites are easy to do. I would like to take a website design class to learn how to make the website look better and jazz it up a little. The design of mine is ok, but I know that there is a lot more you can do with websites.

Well hopefully everybody had a great 4th of July, it was great for me because I finaly got to spend some quality time with my wife and our new born son.

Week 3

Wow week three is almost over I can't believe how fast its going. This week I thought was a long dragged out week. In all my classes the homework was very time consuming. Has anybody ever done a LMS for an high school class. It would be interesting to see how they would handle it. I'm sure they would do fine. I wonder though if you did use a LMS if you would teach a class for the whole year on it or if it would be only a semester class. I can't see doing a full year class in high school. I know at our school some students do take online courses that last the semester called virtual high school, but I think its starting to die off at our school and hardly any kids are taking the online courses. I know when it first came out tons of our kids took the classes because the virtual high school offered courses we didn't have at our school. I think that would be one benefit about online courses, offering classes online that your school doesn't have.

Well looking onto next week, looks pretty tough with creating the webpage. I already spent a ton of time on it and I'm going to have to spend a ton more. I always have fun with them, but once again they are always time consuming. I guess everything that deals with technology is time consuming.

LMS Project

To tell you the truth I had a lot of fun with this project the only problem I ran into was I couldn't get my syllabus added to the LMS. Any suggestions? The syllabus took a lot of time to do so I better be able to add it. Man the whole project was really time consuming. I feel like I don't have a life, wake up and do homework all day long. Thats what I get for taking three classes in the summer session 1.

Anyways, I decided to do my LMS project on World War II. I came up with several projects and have a forum discussion spot for each weeks reading. I also am going to have students do a blog on their own opinions about what we discussed over the week. They will have to do a weekly chat also. The more and more I do these project the more I realize I miss being in the classroom. Its to bad I couldn't teach one class a day. I'm sure If I wanted to they would let me.

Is anybody in class a Library Media Specialist that gets to teach any classes?

Instructional Website

I have finally figured out what I am going to do my instructional website design on. I am going to set a website up to help a sophomore United states history class. I will put their assignments, reviews, worksheets, projects, and notes on the website. The main reason I would do this website is to keep the parents informed on what we are doing in class. Plus they will be able to know the students assignments, so they can make sure they will do them. I don't know if the parents will actually do this, but if I get one or two to check the website and help their child, I guess it will be a success. It will also be there for any child who missed class. Plus this will be an extra resource to help students with the class.



I have been looking at the LMS and I'm not sure what I'm going to do for this project. To be honest I'm not really sure what it is. I know we talked about on wednesday chat session, but for some reason I thought we were talking about the Instructional website. Hopefully I will get a little more insight on this project. Really this is the only thing right now I'm worried about.

Second Week

I'm not sure yet what I want to do for my instructional website. I have created several websites, but they were simple and they were all for the sports teams in my school. For most of them I just added a team picture and put a link for the team schedule on the website. For the teams I coach, I added all sorts of things. I put team stats, picture, school records, and archives on the site.

I enjoy creating websites but, they are very time consuming and I can see how some teachers might not have the time to do them or keep up with them. I think once you get the initial part of creating them, the other part of keeping up with them is not bad. I think by creating them for your class it will definately benefit your students and their parents. The parents will now know what their child is learning and know what their child assignment is for homework each night. Plus if a student is absent from school they can see what they learned that day in class and know what their homework was.

Man I think I'm finally starting to get old. I play slow pitch softball and last night I dove for a ball and now my whole body aches. Thats never happened to me before. It might be time to give up softball and play golf. Just kidding I love playing the game and I don't think I would be happy chasing a golf ball into the woods trying to find it all the time. The good thing is we won the game last night and are now 5-0. My young kids I added to the team are playing well, which surprises me because usually it takes people a while to get adjusted to slow pitch coming from baseball. It took me personally a year to get adjusted.

The First Week of Class

Hey everybody its Friday! I thought the first week of class went pretty smooth. I was definately worried about doing the webquest, but I got through it. To make matters worse the CAVS lost the series to the SPURS, but they did make it to the finals. Now I little worried about doing a podcast, I have never done one before either. The exciting thing about this is that I am learning new things and hopefully I will able to use them in the future in school. Well I'm heading off to basketball open gym. I hope I get more than four kids this time. You will never turn a round a program with those numbers.

Have a nice weekend!

First Blog Assignment

For our first assignment creating a webquest I was a little nervous about doing it. I had never used or created a webquest before. In fact I didn't even know what a webquest was. After researching for several hours I think I finaly know what a webquest is. It doesn't look like they would be to hard to do. It just looks like it could be time consuming. One of the sites that was helpful to me was the site http://webquest.sdsu.edu/materials.htm. After doing the webquest I realized how much I miss being in the classroom. Don't get wrong I love being the Library/ Media Specialist, but the classroom brings something different. I had a lot of fun doing the webquest, it was refreshing to do something new. I just hope I did it right. I'm just curious how many people in our class have done webquest before? Here is my Webquest: Great Depression Webquest. I like the way webquest are broken down into overview, introduction, questions, process, resources, evaluation, and conclusions. When making one, it makes sure that you cover every area and you are keeping on task.

This is my second time using blogs I have found them to be quite useful. This fall I would like to try and use one for a book club. Many of my students in my book club have said they couldn't meet after school and none of them have the same studyhall during the day to meet. So I thought maybe I could try and use a blog or even a wiki. I want a place where students can comment on a book and have open discussions. I feel that a blog is a perfect place because a student can write out their comments about a book and other students can comment about their thoughts and then the student can coment back. Does anybody have any other suggestions or ideas on this?