Boolean Search

Search Keys	Purpose of limiter	What did you find when you tried it? How many hits? Was this limiter effective?
AND	Narrows down your search by only showing things that contain both phrases on either side of the and	When searching Norwegian and knitting: 2,980,000 results were found on Google on a wide variety of topics.
OR	Broadens your search results by showing things that contain phrases on either side of the or	When searching Norwegian or knitting: Same results as using and
NOT	Narrows down your search by eliminating things from your search that contain the phrase after not	When searching Norwegian knitting not patterns: 2,930,000 results were found although many still contained patterns
“ “	Tells the search engine what words constitute the phrase being acted on	When searching “Norwegian knitting” not pattern: however, adding the “” around Norwegian knitting reduced the results to 50,300 results which was significant
*	This is the wildcard. It is added to words in places where letters may vary but you want to search for all forms of the word	When searching “Norwegian knitting” not pattern*: Adding the * to the end of pattern actually increased the results to 194,000
- (minus)	The same as not	When searching "Norwegian knitting" -pattern*: the results were slightly different with 154,000 results
+ (plus)	The same as and	When searching Norwegian+knitting, the results were the same as using and
5 Others You’ve Found
Near	Similar to and but the words must be found within a certain space of each other	Using near also yielded the same results as using and
:.org	Put this after your search term to retrieve results that only come from .org websites	Using this filter left 1,240,000 sites.
Zip code	Type your 5 digit zip code in after the search phrase to get results limited to your location in Google	Searching knitting 99801 yielded 144,000 results for knitting in Juneau
~	Place this immediately in front of the word you are searching to find synonyms	Using the ~ before patterns in Norwegian knitting patterns caused the results to jump from 179,000 to1,180,000
:.gov	Narrows your search to only websites ending in .gov	Searching for Norway:.gov yielded a variety of government information on the country.

Reflection on VoiceThread

Using VoiceThread for our last assignment was a fun way to create a multimedia slideshow that could have many applications in the classroom.  Using this site to create a digital story was a challenge because you have to keep in mind the interactivity of the program.  When you design a digital story telling project, I think it is natural to imagine that the story will need a certain level of flow between scenes or slides. In VoiceThread, though, there is a good chance that your story will be punctuated with other people's comments.  While the ability to comment on individual slides is one of the great features of VoiceThread, it changes the way that you must think about your presentation.

I could see using VoiceThread in my class in a number of different ways.  In addition to telling stories, this site would be a great way to show off student work, present class photos of an event, or communicate with parents what is going on.  A teacher could also create a VoiceThread as a form of assessment.  In this VoiceThread, a teacher has posted math problems and the students have commented their responses along with their strategies for solving the problems.

Overall, this site offers a lot of great ways to bring technology into the classroom and give every student a voice on the web.  Whether they are creating their own story or commenting on one slide about themselves in a VoiceThread about the whole class, they can have ownership of the work.  Also, it allows students to publish their work to the outside world.  This could be a parent or grandparent or it could be a complete stranger.  Either way, students' motivation will be incredibly high to complete work that they are proud of.

Web Based Collaboration Tools

Web based collaboration tools can create great opportunities for people to work together. In schools, these tools can facilitate student-student projects, teacher-teacher projects, student-teachers projects, and parent-student-teacher projects. With so many ways that people might want to work together, which sites offer the best applications? For this project, I looked at Knotebooks, Twiducate, and GroupTable. 

Knotebooks

     The idea behind Knotebooks is that you can create a personalized web page on a topic for yourself by selecting the just-right level of information under each heading within the page.  The site also allows you to switch out text within a heading for video or other media.  You can then save your customized web page for reference later.  It is kind of like an adjustable text book.  Like Wikipedia, you can also upload your own articles to the website that others may use in their pages. Although I find the idea behind this site fascinating and the site itself to be easy to navigate and use, I was disappointed by the amount of information currently available. In particular, there is little content appropriate for elementary school use at this time.
     This site could also be a great way for teachers to share and find lesson plans like this one.  Again, though, there are not many lesson plans on the site and none that would be appropriate for elementary school teachers. If this site continues to grow and gain in popularity, I would not be surprised if it became a great resource for elementary school teachers even though it is not quite there yet.

Twiducate

Twiducate gives teachers the ability to turn their class into a mini social networking site similar to twitter.  Teachers create the network; then their students each get their own account.  Teachers also have the ability to open their network up to other classes.  The benefit to this site is that it is private; the teacher and students are the only ones seeing content which could keep the site safer.  However, there are two drawbacks that I see to using a site that is private.  First of all, parents may not be able to access the site which would be a loss, and second, when students publish they are not getting to publish to any larger of an audience than if they had just had their work displayed in the classroom.  I can see why some teachers might want to keep their classroom information private, and Twiducate could be a great way to accomplish that.  However, I would not want to use this as my class's only online presence.

 GroupTable

GroupTable is a website that allows members of a group to work together on a project by sharing a calendar, creating a task list, chatting, posting discussions, and uploading documents.  I think that this site offers tools that students could use to work together on group projects or teachers could use to work together on committee projects.  I like that the site allows users to assign tasks to specific individuals and has a calendar for making sure that tasks are completed on time.  I could see myself using this site to work with students doing an expert study or passion project.  However, the uploads section of the site seems a little confusing and would probably require some direct guidance before students could effectively use it on their own.

It was interesting to look at all three of these sites.  Each site put its own spin on online collaboration, and I could see myself using any of them in the future if the situation was correct.

References

Filippazzo, J., & Clark, T. (n.d.). Knotebooks -Anyone can contribute. Everyone can learn.. Retrieved October 16, 2011, from http://knotebooks.com/

GroupTable. Retrieved October 16,2011, from https://www.grouptable.com/

Twiducate-Social Networking for Schools. Retrieved October 16, 2011, from http://twiducate.com/about.php

I am an Educator Voice Thread

Technology Use in the Elementary Classroom

Although most teachers would agree that integrating technology into the classroom is beneficial to student learning, most teachers have not actually achieved this in their teaching.  In fact, for most teachers, technology's greatest impact on teaching comes in the form of preparation and communication tools while instructional tools are left out.  There are many reasons why this occurs; however, it is obvious that teachers must make an effort to shift technology out of their hands and into the hands of their students on a regular basis if they want to make the most use of their resources.

According to a study by Russell (2003) most teachers use technology for preparing materials and for communicating while few have mastered actualy integration into their curriculum.  What was most interesting about this study was that the youngest, most technology savvy teachers were the ones who actually used technology the least in their actual teaching.  Even though this is at first suprising, it actually kind of makes sense. Finding ways to use technology in your own life is easy, but creating great lessons that use technology in a meaningful way means that you have to plan a whole different aspect into your teaching.  While young teachers may be the most comfortable with teaching, they are probably the least experienced teachers, gennerally speaking.  In order for teachers to be the most successful at integrating technology into their classrooms, I think that they must be comfortable with technology and with experimenting with new types of lessons.

 When technology is being used in the classroom, there are many areas where it can be integrated into the curriculum.  According to our class text, the six categories of technology that most applications fall into are word processing, spreadsheet software, organizing and brainstorming software, multimedia, data collection tools, web resources, and communication software (Pilter, Hubbell, Kuhn, Malenoski 2007).  By utilizing all six different types of applications and coming up with daily ways to integrate technology into curriculum, it is possible to extend student learning by capturing their attention, presenting the information, and allowing them to take control of their own learning.

References:
Russell M (2003). Examining Teacher Technology Use : Implications for Preservice and Inservice Teacher Preparation. Journal of Teacher Education. 54 (4), 297-310.

Pitler, H., Hubbel, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, Virginia: ASCD.

In the hood...

Interview with a Tech Guru

On Wednesday, October 6, 2011, Afton, Liz and I had the pleasure of interviewing Ted Wilson, the principal of G.V. about the technology in the school.  As someone who grew up interested in technology, he has used his knowledge to integrate it into teaching since he started teaching at the school in 1997 and continued to do so as the principal.  Having been both a teacher and a principal, he has some great insight into the value of technology in education.

Mr. Wilson first began using computers as a student himself in high school, so he knows first hand how technology can draw people into learning.  As a new teacher, he took his own experiences and made using technology a priority in his classroom; with the benefit of good timing, he was able to be influential in some of Glacier Valley's big purchases in 1997 when the state gave out a bond issue for buying technology.  Other money from the state since then has allowed Glacier Valley to remain on top of changing technologies.  The recent renovation of the school brought with it a good wireless network in addition to other things.

Ted believes that technology is important because it is a subject similar to art and science.  These subjects are the part of the curriculum that is the main motivator for many students, giving them a reason for coming to school and working hard.  With technology, teachers are able to extend their class projects into meaningful, powerful activities.  In fact, his favorite thing about technology is seeing teachers who have extended the writing process to have students make audio and video productions in their classes.

Ted has noticed that as this generation of students moves through the school that they are very comfortable with technology in addition to being motivated by it.  Even kindergarten students can use laptops.  With technology, even a simple thing (like a digital camera) can create an engaging, motivating, relevant experience.

It was very interesting talking with Ted about his experiences, and I am thankful to him for taking some time out of his schedule to sit down and talk with us.

Technology Inventory at G.V.

Here is a short list of some of the technology resources we have at our school.

Hardware:

• In Every Classroom:
•  Every teacher has a laptop
•  Desk top computers in every classroom
•  Document Cameras in every classroom
•  Flat screen television in every classroom
•  dvd/vhs player
• sound system
• wilreless microphone
• wireless internet
• cable
• digital camera
• Alapha Smarts/Neo (Intermediate grades only)

• For use within the school:
• 3 Laptop carts with ~30 laptops in each
• Flip Camera
• SmartBoard (located in library)
• USB wireless microphone
• Wired microphones
• Scientific Testing Equipment
• Probe Scope
• Water Quality Testing Device
• Weather Station
• Large drop down Screen in library and commons
• Digital Camera

Software

• For Students to use:
• Microsoft Office Suite
• iWorks
• Kidspiration
• Kidpics
• All the Right Type
• ComicLife
• Accelerated Reader
• Safari/Firefox
• DragonSpeak 
• Google Earth

• For teachers:
• Power Teacher
• CummuniGate Web Mail
• File Maker
• All programs students have