7/22/2021 1 Comment Course Reflection![]() ITD 645 Computers in Education has been very practical and will prove to be very useful as I move forward in my career as a teacher and in life as technology permeates basically everything that we do in society. Computers in Education was my last course in the Master of Arts program and was absolutely one of my favorites. The course assisted my growth not only in technology but in many other areas. The course assisted my growth as an educator in many ways some of which included: challenging me to learn new things on my own, with others, and from others, It helped me improve upon my leadership skills, caused me to think deeply about good digital citizenship, forced me to set aside time and energy to collaborate with my colleagues, it helped me think about and grow as a designer of educational activities, it facilitated group and individual learning, and allowed me to review the importance of assessment I am not a digital native or a millennial, I am an older non-traditional student and have witnessed and participated in the growth in technology. I am also somewhat a “jack of all trades, master of none” kind of guy. I have already learned to struggle and work with different software and technology tools. I understand the difficulties related to the process of having limited instruction and training with a piece of software, and being handed a task to learn and complete. It is always a struggle that gets easier with practice. When working with tech you have to be prepared to accept mistakes and understand that the learning process is as important as the deliverable. I learned a lot during the 8 weeks of the course. I became much more proficient with several tools and was exposed to several new tools during the course. Following is a bulleted list of tools/skills that I was able to work with during the course. Some of which I will discuss further and provide examples of on my reflections of ISTE standards pages.
Each week I was required to create a reflection about the week’s readings and projects. I found this to be an enlightening and educational experience. Reflecting on materials learned before moving on is a tactic that has been presented to me recently in Dr. Howell’s classroom management lectures and in an audiobook by Dr. Barbara Oakley that I had never really taken the time to perform. Because it was a requirement in this course I did it and found it to be very helpful. I will require my students to reflect on different materials and probably use a very similar template to the one used in ITD 645 of an end of the week paragraph/blog post/email... I also really liked the tools that I we used. I may not use all the same exact tools, but I’m sure I will use the same concepts.
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Week Seven was relatively interesting. The mini-projects were building a padlet on Padlet.com, interactive documents on thinglink.com, creating an interactive quiz, and building a rubric. All were new to me and all seemed potentially useful in the classroom. I definitely learned a bit as I always do when I have work with a new product or piece of software. Most of the times that I have ever been tasked with using a new piece of software, I begin a little confused and frustrated. I believe that is simply the nature of computing whether it be collaborative internet tools, programming, networking, etc... But after wading through, watching tutorials, and trying things it becomes easier. Like everything else we get better with practice. The first mini-project was to create a padlet on padlet.com. This was a group project and I am very lucky to have the group members that I have. We always have a meeting early in the week to discuss the assignment, communicate well throughout and complete things in a very timely manner. Once the padlet was created everyone posted material and created thinglink documents for posting. The next parts were to build an interactive quiz using an asynchronous tool called quizizz and a rubric with rubristar. Neither were overly difficult to put together and meet the requirements. I think the difficult part in the classroom will be providing solid content for the quiz and rubrics, which will become easier as I gain experience. In summary, week 7 was another quality learning experience that provided me with tools and experiences that I will take to the classroom. Please follow the links below to view the deliverables for the week. Greg
This week's project(s) were individual projects working with screen capture and video editing tools, which is something that I have wanted to get better at for quite some time. My group, which is pretty awesome met early in the week via zoom to discuss the assignments and create a game plan. Our subject is Mississippi Studies and the lesson plan covers economic development in Mississippi. There are 5 major industries in Mississippi and we have 5 in the group, so we each got one of the industries for our work. I drew the Transportation Industry. It wasn't very difficult to find good information and create a small powerpoint, but it was difficult to edit the information into a 3 minute presentation and get in front of the camera and present the information. I'm fairly comfortable speaking into the camera, but I find that I get tongue tied too often and am unable to continue. I am too quick to stop and start over. The projects were much more time consuming than I anticipated and I still don't believe I nailed any of the three. But, I did learn a whole lot and am soooo much more comfortable editing videos. I am 100% sure that I will continue to work on this skill and use video editing/presentations in the classroom and for my baseball players. I spent a large amount of time and energy working on the projects and feel like it was time and energy well spent. Please follow the links below to my videos. Let me know if you have any problems. NOTE: WHEN YOU OPEN THE INTERACTIVE VIDEO YOU WILL NEED TO LISTEN TO THE AUDIO NOTE BEFORE THE VIDEO WILL PLAY. Thank You for reading my Blog. Greg Sanders
Project 6 - Screen Capture - Lecture on the Transportation Industry in Mississippi
6/28/2021 2 Comments Chapter 8, Question 1 ReflectionHave you had any distance education or blended course experiences? Try to remember what were the benefits and the disadvantages of that experience. If you have not had either type of course, try to imagine what it would be like and what characteristics of it you would like and which ones you would not. Why?
I am currently in the Alternative Route MAT program and have completed eight on-line courses since beginning the program last June. I began the program by taking the 3 licensure courses during the summer, two of which were synchronous courses that met on-line via Zoom or Microsoft Teams once a week and the other asynchronous and had awesome lectures recorded for viewing any time. Since the first summer I have taken 5 more courses, some of them were synchronous and others asynchronous, but all have been distance learning. During my first summer semester I found the lack of face-to-face interaction to be emotionally challenging. I felt as though I was all alone in the quest and had no support system until Dr. Davis suggested I reach out to one of my classmates. I followed her suggestion and reached out to Tyler Buckley. He was experiencing the same feelings.Before long Tyler and I spoke on the phone pretty much every day, multiple times on many days, which was a tremendous help. In short the biggest disadvantage for me with on-line courses is the lack of regular peer interaction. I also found it difficult to attend 3 hour zoom meetings twice per week. There have also been advantages. Having the ability to schedule and work on coursework whenever I find the time has helped. I am usually very busy during the day and often find myself working on schoolwork late at night (as I type it is 1:00 a.m). I also find the structure and organization in Canvas to be very helpful. At any time, I can look at modules and assignments. Greg Sanders 6/27/2021 1 Comment Week 5 Project ReflectionsWeek five project work had its difficulties partly because I spent the week traveling through Florida visiting and vacationing and several of my group members were busy traveling and doing other things. But, I have been blessed with the best group members that anyone could ask for. We collaborated well and broke the projects down into manageable parts. We utilized Zoom Meetings, Group Text Messaging, Canvas Inbox, and Google products very efficiently to complete all of our assignments. I learned a large amount about the flexibility and usefulness of my google drive and the wide range of google tools. This week reinforced how important open and free communication is within an educational setting. I will definitely create and distribute google docs and audio files to my players and students. I have gained some very good instructional knowledge and added several tools to my teaching toolbox this week. This class is shaping up to be an extremely helpful class. I will use the things that I am learning. This course (ITD 645) seems very useful and somewhat exciting!
What would you do if you saw one of your students sharing personal information about themselves or posting detrimental comments about others on the Web? What is the limit of your responsibility under those circumstances?
In today’s digital classroom teachers bear a large responsibility in teaching, promoting, and providing examples of proper digital citizenship. Teachers must prepare students to be responsible citizens in society and the digital world. I would argue that teachers and especially coaches bear the responsibility of policing their students and players in regard to their digital presence. Teachers and coaches are responsible to teach students that being a good digital citizen is much the same as being a good citizen and that we should all create and maintain a positive presence in the digital world. We must emphasize the fact that once something becomes digital it never ever goes away. If faced with students sharing personal information, posting detrimental comments about others, or making inappropriate posts about themselves I would first explain the importance of practicing “The Golden Rule” whether in the real or virtual world. Because the line between today’s real and virtual world is very fine and relatively non-existent. I would also emphasize that once something becomes digital it never ever goes away and that there are no true secrets on the internet. Teachers are extremely limited to the extent in which they can control what students post. All teachers can do is provide guidance to the students and hope the students make the right choices. Coaches have more responsibility and control over their student-athlete and must exercise that authority by holding players accountable to their digital citizenship My group (group 3) is easy to work with. We created an initial Zoom meeting to discuss the project. During the initial meeting we reviewed the instructions, looked at the examples, brainstormed what our 21st century classroom would look like, divided the tasks, and created a working timeline. I was paired with Victoria (Tori) Parker to create the lesson plan. Tori and I created Zoom meeting in which we worked closer on the lesson plan and plan of action. We created a google doc for our lesson plan divided the tasks within the lesson plan and broke to study and work. We worked on the plan for a couple of days met again and finalized the lesson plan portion. The group then met again and all reviewed each piece of the project. We then put the pieces (Lesson plan, classroom arrangement, budget list) together. Once completed with the pieces, one of our members wrote the Executive Summary. I learned the basics of grant writing and got a much better understanding about creating a lesson plan. My group was very professional and pleasant to work with. I feel very lucky to have been assigned to the group that I am in, I would not trade any of them. Greg ![]()
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