Digital Media in the Classroom

Why Digital Media?

   I just finished up my first graduate class in Instructional Media through Wilkes University. The class was "Internet Tools in the classroom" and helped me to get a good understanding of what tools are currently being used in the classroom. It also forced me to create this blog, something I was also very hesitant about but am very glad that I finally started. If you would like to read about some thigns I learned from that class, you can read some of my blog posts below.
  I am now starting an 8 week journey for my next two classes in the program. Digital Storytelling and Digital Media in the classroom. As a part of my first assignment for the latter class, I was asked to answer a few questions for the introduction portion in "twitter-style" Enjoy my short answers below.

1. Who are you and what do you do? My name is Mike Balliet and I teach First Grade in Montandon, Pennsylvania
2. What is your primary goal for taking this course? I want to increase engagement in my classroom while preparing my students to be successful in todays high tech society.
3. What is your philosophy of education? My philosophy is to create and foster a love for learning while equipping kids with the tools and information necessary to be successful lifelong learners.
4. What do you see as the greatest benefit of using technology and/or digital media in the classroom? A drastic increase in student engagement and the ability to allow students to see a much deeper perspective of content with more opportunities to actively use aquired knowledge.
5. What is your biggest concern or challenge with using technology and/or digital media in the classroom? The strict filter used in our district for internet tools requires me to learn most programs or software at home. Also, making sure the technology is available for students to use.
6. Provide an example of how you currently use technology and/or digital media in the classroom.  I currenly use the MOBI digital presentation tablet, I have one Ipad but hard to use with a whole class. I also use behavior management software.
7. How does your classroom today differ from when you were the same age as your students? Today, there are many more opportunities for visual learning. With youtube you can take students on a journey through lessons, have them share their answers online, and create digital presentations. It is much more engaging and more fast-paced, but also higher expectations.

I look forward to sharing the information I aquire from this class. Stay tuned and join me on this digital adventure.

Attending a Live Webinar

Live Webinars

    I have attended live webinars for multiple reasons including job trainings, mandatory professional development events, and personal desire. As a part of our Internet Tools for the Classroom class, we were asked to attend a live webinar. I scheduled a live webinar for common core assessments through discovery education. Due to poor internet connectivity, my experience was interrupted shortly after the webinar began and I was unable to attend this webinar. I share this experience because I contacted the people at discovery education to ask how I could still view the content of this webinar. They informed that although they would be unable to share the information with me now, they would be archiving the entire series upon completion. This gave me the idea to start looking up archived webinar series. Wow! There are countless opportunities to take part in webinars on a variety of topics. Although I appreciate the opportunity to interact with the presenter in most live webinars, I realized that many webinars provided a post-webinar Q&A opportunity that can be referenced at your convenience.
   Because I recently received a district-issued Ipad to use in my classroom, I began to seek out webinars that would assist me in using this technology right away. One of the best adavantages of archived webinars is that you can view them at your own convenience while still receiving most of the benefits of viewing it live. I also didn't have to be present at a specific time, and internet connectivity wasn't an issue either.
   The webinar I decided to view was though discovery education and it was titled "iPads in discovery education." Kyle Schutt was the presenter for this webinar. In this webinar, Kyle shared how to download videos from the desktop site to your computer. Since you can't stream the videos on your ipad from the desktop site, he demonstrated how to download the video, convert the format, load it one iTunes, and even create a playlist using multiple media files on the same topic. He also showed the much easier choice to use the mobile site for united streaming which allows you to stream directly. The nice thing about downloading them and placing them on iTunes is that you can access them even without having Internet connectivity. However, the mobile site for the ipad is very nice and extremely functional. You can view the ipad site by clicking here. (Subscription required) Kyle also shared his ability to project his ipad on the monitor by using a VGA input and an app program like expedition.
   Although the webinar was designed to teach views how to implement use of discovery education on the ipad, Kyle did a great job at sharing some other great resources. I would like to share some of those resources below.
       Livebinder - livebinder is an online "3 ring binder" that allows you to curate all your information on a topic and place it all in one neat "online binder." It's a great place to also research other topics and binders users have created. You can click here to explore for yourself.
       IEAR - I education apps review is a community of ipad users that give feedback and reviews o educational apps for the ipad. You can search for specific apps or click on one of the various links on the page to research apps on a topic you are looking for. You can click here to view the page.
   
    Now that I see the wealth of archived webinars, I plan on viewing more as I find them appropriate to my needs, still they do lack the interaction that  Live Webinar offers.

   After viewing the archived webinar, I had the opportunity to attend a Live webinar presented by the same presenter  Kyle Schutt. He also has a co-presenter, Michael Gormon. The webinar titled, "Students as curators, managing new information in the digital classroom," was presented by Discovery Education as a part of a professional growth webinar series sponsored my Plymoth Rock Assurance.
    The major advantage of the Live webinar was the opportunity to interact with the presenters as well as the other attendees. Below I have shared some of the notes I took while viewing the webinar. Ironically, I was using Evernote to take notes, which is one of the tools recommended during the webinar.
 
    The common core - "Educators must share curriculum, effective instructional opportunities, and assessment in order for the school community to accomplish the goals of the common core.
     Students use the internet as a consumer, but we want them to be a user and produce of information  and reinvent information themselves 
    A brief timeline of curation - the slate, the textbook , the film strip projector , lesson plans, files, filing systems, failing cabinets and more filing cabinets,  the computer , the floppy disc, the hard drive, the cd, the Internet, and now, the cloud, 

The tools presented will help to answer the question, "How do you filter the information in the cloud? How to we sort through the information and make it useable, is it useable for all students (closed captioning, can the PDF be read?). Below is a brief description of the tools presented and how they can be used

• Symbaloo - free - create app style bookmarks for online sites /links/ resources. Organize and share the best of the web . Each icon is a link to the site. Symbalooedu.com shows how to use the site for educational purposes. You can discover other user's webmixes as well. Once you sign up for the site you immediately get the EDU webmix that recommends great sites to be used in education. You can choose web mixes for specific educational tools. The symbaloo gallery allows you to search specific topics and filter by popularity and views. You can also view user's webmixes when you find a user whose webmix you enjoy. You can have students create webmixes for subject/topic based purposes.  You can share webmixes using the share tab using he HTML link.  The URL eliminates the purpose to log in but still can access the symbaloo webmix. Gallery allows you to search other symbaloo galleries. You can add other users webmixes to your own webmix folder for future reference.
• Diigo - "Connect,organize, and online bookmarking" (similar to delicious). You can set up diigo account for your students. Free upgrade to education edition. Allows you to add extensions for your browser . You can search community library for other people's bookmarks on a specific topic. It shows views/ popularity ratings to.help you choose the right site. You can also view specific users to see what they are bookmarking 
• Evernote - Evernote is a note taking app that allows you to sync across all devices. I actually used my Ipad to take notes during the webinar since I was using my laptop to view the webinar. I then logged on to the site on my laptop to view my notes to create this blog post. You can create collective notes as a class. Create multiple notebooks. You can share the URL for the note to share the opportunity to edit the note. 
• Live binders - free - digital binder- can use livebinders for projects. There are tabs on each binder for subtropics on each binder. It can be used for presentation, digital story, steps in lab report, demonstration of learning, step by step procedure to show understanding. You can search for binders on topics such as the common core,  then filter your results based on topics such as strictly education binders. You can sort by views/popularity and view that presenters other binders as well. 
• My big campus - Collect, curate, and create. My bigcampus.com/getstarted gives you the opportunity to sign up for the site for free. Registrations takes a day or two to get set up because they make sure that you are an educator setting up the site. It has an  Edmodo style feel. Teachers create bundles of information on a specific topic for students to access for assignment or instrution purposes. Example of bundles - teachers can curate multiple resources and documents on specific topic for student to view so they can access all content based on a topic. It also embeds YouTube videos directly on the page.
• Google custom search -  you create a search engine for just one topic.  Students could create their own search engine. You select the sites you want it to search. In order for the kids to use the modified search engine you will just have students type in that specific URL. 

Some other quick references the Kyle and Mike shared included:

1. Linkyy 
2. Scoop.it
3. Pinterest 
4. Educlipper - Pinterest style education site 
5. Printfriendly.com -  you enter the URL of the site and hit ring preview and it will take out all adds . You can save it as a PDF to send or post on another web page.

The webinar closed up by sharing 5 important tips to remember when using these online resources.

1. Know the site - get the know the site in and out. How to use it. Dangers for students to use the site.
2. Know your district's AUP - does your district condone or allow the site
3. Involve your school's administration - just because a site is blocked or filtered doesn't mean it needs to be. Keep your district officials informed of the opportunity and the possibilities of new sites and see if they can change access opportunities. 
4.  Involve your parents - inform your parents of your involvement in the site and the opportunities for them to be part of it.
5. Teach, model, and monitor digital citizenship - make sure you students understand the expectations and the students understand how to use the internet appropriately. Especially when introducing new sites. 

To see additional information - check out Michael Gormons blog

   
     

Cell Phones in the classroom

Cell Phones in the Classroom Interview

   As part of my Internet Tools in the classroom class, I was to interview a teacher and have them share their experience of using cell phones within the classroom. Because our district has a strict policy that students are not to have cell phones during school hours, most teachers have no tried using cell phones as an instructional tool. After asking around quite a bit, I was able to find a teacher who attempted to use it in the classroom. She shared with me some of the pros and cons of her attempt to implement cell phones in the classroom. 

  Janet Hook is a 7th grade math teacher at Milton Area Middle School. During her first year with the district, she was asked to attend a conference on how to implement the use of cell phones within the classroom. After attending the conference she received permission from the principal at the time to pilot some of the free services she learned about while at the conference. One of the requirements that Mrs. Hook needed to meet in order to use the cell phone programs was to have approval from all parents for their children to use the cell phones for school related activities. Janet said in all the classes she tried this with, she never had more than 75% of parents agree to allowing their children to use the cell phones for in-school activities. This was a problem because not all students could not be actively engaged. She did allow students who didn't have a cell phone to participate to share with another student, but they still weren't able to have the full experience, so this was a drawback for her.

    Janet decided to pilot two types of cell phone services: Polling and Text Reminders. Mrs. Hook shared that it had been quite some time since she used the services, so she doesn't remember the specific names, however, she did share with me some details of her experience.   Due to the fact of that we have a strict no cell phone policy in our district, Mrs. Hook decided to pilot the experience with her smallest class. Her class consisted of 7-8 7th graders. She used the polling site to have the students answer some math questions throughout the class. Most of her polling questions were taken from Studyisland, a site our district uses for benchmarking purposes. She shared that one of the strongest benefits of students using the cell phones in the classroom was the interest and engagement generated by the opportunity. The word of this opportunity quickly spread and many other classes quickly asked to have a chance to take part. Although the students were engaged, students quickly began to take advantage of this opportunity by using their cell phones for reasons other than class related activities. Due to this fact, and the fact that she has the opportunity to use CPS clickers for the same type of feedback, she decided to stop using them in class. This not only allows for all students to be involved, but also takes away the opportunity for students to take advantage of using cell phones in the classroom. 

   Ultimately, Janet shared that her favorite aspect of using cell phones in the classroom was the student excitement and engagement generated by the use of the technology. She did share that this same type of engaged excitement is generated by the clickers and the kindles she has available in the class. Janet stated, "Most people tell me technology needs to be used with a purpose, not just for the sake of using technology. But why not just for the sake of using technology if it means students will be engaged." I had to agree with Janet on this. If her students are more engaged using technology, why not do the best you can to implement technology in the classroom as much as possible. 

   

Developing an online portfolio

You.com

    For my final assignment in my "Internet Tools in the Classroom" class I was to create an online portfolio or create an online presence to share with others. While looking for a site to create this digital portfolio I looked through many sites, but narrowed it down to three sites. I have shared a brief description of the three sites and what site I ultimately decided to go with.

vizualize.me - This site allows you to enter in your educational history and your work history. It creates a timeline on your homepage to share a visual timeline of both experiences. It does allow you to enter some other personal/professional information, but does not share this information on your homepage. It also limits your ability to share your social media outlets on the homepage. The site is in the beta stage, so I am sure improvements are on the way, however, this site did not offer the type of presentation I was looking for.

flavors.me - flavors.me and about.me are very similiar sites. They allow you to create a visual pleasing homepage with customizable background and allow for easy edits to the homepage. It does allow for you to edit a mobile version of your page, but this is only for premium users. The fee is only $19.99 a year. Although most of the options and features of the site are available for free, you're ultimately limited due to the need for premium membership. I did create a page using this site so that I have ownership of one, but I chose to to utilize this site as my primary outlet for my digital portfolio.

about.me - I decided to go with about.me for my online portfolio. This site is 100% free and couldn't be easier to use. It allows you to edit your background and create a bio on your homepage. It also allows you to easily add tabs so that viewers can access your social media pages directly from your about.me homepage. I kept my information brief due to the fact that I am very cautious of our districts regulations for social media right now, but I did explore enough to see all the options. You can also view your about.me site on mobile devices as part of a mobile platform. This site is extremely user friendly and well worth the time it takes to set up. You can view my about.me site by clicking here. If you enjoy my page please like my page and feel free to contact me via the site or any other social media site you explore on my page.

Live Streaming - using Ustream

Live Broadcast on Ustream

After researching the options to broadcast live, Ustream.tv seemed to be the easiest way to go. The mobile application can be used on both droid devices and apple devices and you can also do it all from the website itself. When I first started thinking about this project I was a little nervous because I didn't quite feel comfortable and was even more unsure what I would broadcast about. After some contemplation, I decided to stream my girlfriend and myself cooking enchilada stuffed peppers. Before the actual broadcast, I practiced broadcasting from my computer, ipad, and droid cell phone. Ultimately, I went with streaming the broadcast from my cell phone due to poor internet connectivity in my house. Since I have 4g on my cell phone, it allowed me to stream with very little lagging. When I practiced on the Ipad and the computer, there were frequent breaks in the broadcast. 

  In order to promote the event, I posted the address and a description of the event on twitter throughout the day. I also texted the address of the broadcast to some close friends during the day.  To help with the time of the broadcast, we had the ingredients prepared ahead of time. The vegetables were chopped, the peppers were in the water, and the Quinoa we boiling. When the broadcast began, I shared with the viewers why I was doing the project, what we were cooking, what ingredients we were using, and the steps. I encouraged viewers to use the social stream feature and talk to me during the broadcast. I did communicate with one user during the broadcast. I was able to make this happen by setting up my laptop downstairs while streaming from my phone. Using the cell phone was a little tricky because I wasn't able to flip from the front-facing camera to the rear-facing camera during the broadcast, so some of the broadcast is a little all over the place. All in all I thought the broadcast went well. I did talk to one of my friends after the broadcast and he shared that the broadcast was clear and easy to understand. I see how this would be neat to use in the classroom to share with parents a special event or a special lesson, however, I don't know if it would be possible unless all parents approved, and that is unlikely to happen.You can view a recorded version of the broadcast by clicking the link below. 

How to make Enchilada Stuffed Peppers