I Really am Linear!!

This past Tuesday's class was truly an eye-opener for me. Our discussion in the library allowed me to better understand my students, my family, and myself. I am a linear, non-multi-tasking person while most of my students, my peer at North, my two children, and my wife are non-linear and able to multi-task. Mike's connection of JSOnline as being non-linear and the paper-version of the Journal Sentinel as being linear made me finally understand a great deal about myself and others. I am very uncomfortable with on-line news sources as I feel like I am missing something if I don't click all links. I much prefer to read a newspaper, magazine, or journal from beginning to end. That way, I don't feel as if I am missing anything and can choose to read, skim, or skip. In addition, our discussion helped me connect my linear functioning to my inability to multi-task. As I add to this blog, I am in the peaceful surroundings of my classroom at 7:30 in the evening (no music or Packer game while I am thinking!). My wife is at home (only 2 minutes away) working on her sermon and bulletin for this Sunday with the TV on. Our daughter will do her homework while listening to music, instant messaging, and text messaging. I cannot do more than one thing at a time without losing focus and getting very frustrated.

The point here is that we all have different methods of reading, learning, and performing tasks. Understanding how others "operate" allows us to better differentiate in the classroom. Some of my students like to multi-task with plenty of noise and light. Others prefer peace and solitude in a dimly-lit area as they complete their assignments.

Many other aspects of this past class will benefit my teaching. The jigsaw method of acquiring content was very helpful in that it was more fun to learn about our textbook chapters through the presentations of the other groups. Here were major points that I took with me:

• Chapter 10--Tutorials can limit higher-order learning.


• Chapter 11--There have many different types of data-transfer hardware over the years such as floppy discs, CD's, laser discs, and jump drives. In addition, the ESCAPE acronym was useful in that it explains how we can move toward more inquiry-based, student-centered learning through the use of multimedia.


• Chapter 15--Mike's presentation of ethical issues and cheating was most helpful as we require our students to cite their sources and paraphrase. Equity issues also caught my attention because I do have students from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds and have seen first hand how these differences can impact learning.
  

This past class was most enlightening. I cannot believe how fast the four hours go. That is a good thing because it demonstrates how engaged we are with our learning. Now, our task is to bring that same engagement back to our students.

InTime Video and its Potential Uses in my Business Education Teaching

Over my first three years of teaching, I have made great use of many on-line lesson plan resources such as EconEdLink, The Stock Market Simulation, the IRS, Insurance Education Initiative Educator Resources, Education World, and others. InTime Video, however, is the first one I have seen that uses video to explain how a lesson/unit plan works.

I chose a high school Career Exploration lesson plan presented by a Kansas business education teacher. It was very easy to observe how she integrated technology and Internet research with careers. Not only did the videos (nine topic-specific videos were included in this presentation) show students working on and presenting their career projects but the teacher explaining her research and background work in preparing the career lessons and unit.

Included with the videos were the purpose, description, activities, standards, tools and resources, assessments with rubrics, timelines (good for pacing help), and comments for the lesson plan. This text could be downloaded and printed in a Word document or a PDF file. I like this because I can write notes as I am preparing, presenting, and reflecting on a lesson.

A current application of this careers lesson would be to have my Business Venture students do a modified (for 8th and 9th graders) version as a precursor to deciding what they want to do for their business plan project. I stress that students should be involved in careers that they love and have an aptitude for. This careers lesson plan would reinforce that and require that my students give serious thought to their career plans and subsequent business involvement.

If It Was Easy, Everyone Would Do Databases!

In the last few years, since I began my teaching career, the subject of databases has come up occasionally with my peers and family. Generally, the conversation begins with a roll of the eyes and a comment that databases are hard to work with. Here are a few examples:

• Our North Junior High attendance secretary said that our student database, PowerSchool, is so difficult to navigate in that she is still entering demographics from last summer.
• My son, a college business major, said that he stays away from databases such as MS Access because of the difficulties in setting them up and creating reports.
• My brother, in his gas grill business, has his point-of-sale system set up in Access 2003. When he has a problem with it, he has to call his tech guy in San Diego because it is very difficult to navigate and modify.
• My fellow business education teachers in Menomonee Falls never look forward to teaching Access due to the many issues their students will have.
• I rolled my own eyes after trying a very basic intro to Access lesson plan in my second quarter of 8th grade Computer Applications at DeForest. It was hard for me to teach and hard for my students to learn. If I were to teach Access again, I would seek out training.
  

With all that being said, I believe that if we really want to learn how to create databases, we should take a class in it at schools such as WCTC or MATC. Databases are much more complex than spreadsheets, documents, and presentations and require more intensive training.

In my classroom, I use our grading/demographic database to create many reports. I will pull reports for sections, class types, assignment categories, missing assignments, comments, phone numbers, and parent/guardian contact names.

In our database work this past Tuesday evening, we tried DABBLEDB. The imported DPI database was confusing to work with. However, once we created our own from scratch, it started to make sense. I did mine on a mini-stock portfolio and created columns for company name, exchange traded on, ticker symbol, P/E ratio, and headquarters location. I then did a "Search" (similar to a query in Access) and found DABBLEDB to be very easy to use. I could envision my students trying this when they create their stock portfolios in our 10-week simulation. In my Business Venture classes next semester, I may have my students try DABBLEDB during our Human Resources unit. Here, they set up a hypothetical staff for their business plan. I believe they would enjoy creating columns (fields) with information such as name, address, phone number (home and cell), job, hours worked, hours available, pay rate, start date, etc. This would be an authentic application that would allow for creativity and analysis.

In conclusion, as my title to this blog suggests, databases are not easy to learn or use. However, with strong training and practice, everyone could indeed utilize databases.

Spreadsheets, EasyBib, and SurveyMonkey are Fun and Useful!

Week 3 of cedu 510 was fun because the software is fascinating to me and I was able to apply Excel, EasyBib, and SurveyMonkey almost immediately to my classes at Falls North. I will use Excel to create a unit pricing lesson plan in my Financial Life Skills classes. In this Consumerism unit activity, students will calculate unit pricing for various grocery items found on-line or in print ads. Thanksgiving food ads should provide a wealth of fun materials! We will work on labels, numbers, formulas, formatting, etc. We used EasyBib with my Computer Applications students. We stress how important citing sources is and this free software allowed my 8th graders to create citations for their own books, on-line newspaper articles, and "How Stuff Works" Web pages. Other than the fact that our school district does not allow students to save EasyBib citations directly into Word, (I could with my teacher rights when I tested it) the lesson went very well. Finally, I used SurveyMonkey to create a 7-question survey for my FLS students. I wanted their feedback on our recent bank field trip and banker guest speaker. Not only did I get useful and honest (anonymous) responses, but many were humorous as only 8th and 9th graders can be. I will bring a print copy of the results to share this Tuesday.
I am an average user of Excel, both in my teaching and in my part-time work at my brother's gas grill store. This allows me to make the following comparisons between Excel and the Google Spreadsheet program that we used this week:

• I liked the autosave function in Google. It is easy to forget to save when using any MS Office program.
• The lack of charting bothered me because my students love to create simple Excel charts when we do our introductory Skittles Excel activity.
• I miss the undo arrow in Google. This MS function is very helpful for me as I often make a change and then change my mind immediately.
• Google seemed slow when making changes in the spreadsheet. Excel spoils me with its quickness.
• I liked the ease of "merge across" in Google. This was easier to locate than Excel's button for the same function.
• Minor issues with Google include: not enough options for decimals, inability to freeze and protect columns (useful when helping my brother with his wide grill pricing spreadsheets), no shrink-to-fit option or headers/footers when printing (limits how a spreadsheet can be printed), cannot change order of worksheet tabs, and no Find command (these last two would cause problems with spreadsheets I create for the summer fastpitch team I coach)

Finally, I am unclear why anyone would use Google spreadsheets, unless they did not have MS Office. Google seems to stress that their collaboration features are important but I have never had a problem in sending Excel spreadsheets as attachments to others for revising and reviewing.

How Useful are Word Processing Software Applications other than MS Word and Search Engines other than Google?

I know this is a wordy title but we covered so much important material this week. Our word processing/search engine assignments were eye-opening in several areas. First, I learned a great deal about search engines other than Google and MSN, the only two I have used extensively. I enjoyed observing the differences between the metasearch, IXQUICK, and my regulars. It was also fascinating to learn how a metasearch works. Second, besides my old Brother word processor from the 1980's, I have never worked with any word processing software applications other than Microsoft Word. Trying out Google Docs was similar to trying out Google Presentations, Gmail, Google Calendar, SPresent, and Cumulate Draw. I encountered much frustration in navigating, formatting, saving, retrieving, and sending documents from these software applications. On the other hand, it was fun (provided I was in a patient mood) to learn the various functions of these programs and observe how different the results are from Microsoft products.

Learning about new search engines was a valuable activity that I will use in my teaching. I discovered that IXQUICK is more effective in finding business education lesson plans that will engage my students. I found more relevant results using this metasearch over Google or MSN. In addition, my Financial Life Skills students will use IXQUICK to conduct more in-depth research on companies that they are interested in investing in for The Stock Market Simulation. I searched for information on Arby's, Maggiano's, and The Cheesecake Factory and found IXQUICK gets more informative results. On the flip side, IXQUICK did a poorer job in searching for graphics than Google. That, however, will not be a major issue in my rather non-artistic business classes. Other search engines will provide what we need. Overall, my students will benefit by using different search engines so that they get the most relevant results for their research.

The use of Goggle Docs in this activity made me appreciate Word more than I already do. I found Google Docs to be difficult in the following areas: limited font styles and sizes, no repeat key, no formatting paint brush, no paragraph spacing, cannot see current format settings, spellcheck without suggestions or replacements, no bullet customizing, cannot hold the control key to select multiple sections, and no Word Art. Several strong features included autosave, ease of renaming document, revision history, informative help menu, and easy creation of multiple bullet levels.

At Falls North Junior High, we use Word everyday in our business education classes. Word processing is necessary in Computer Applications (letters, memos, reports, citations), Financial Life Skills (stock research reports, budgets, complaint letters, reflections) and Business Venture (business plan, entrepreneur profile, marketing mix). We do have some students without easy computer access away from school. Whether they have access to the Internet (can then use Google Docs) or to MS Office (can use Word) is the question. By informing and training my students in Google Docs, I would hope that all could do word processing for their school work and personal use.

Reflection on Presentation Programs

I enjoyed checking out the 4 free presentation programs and thinking about how they could be used in my business courses. 3 of the 4 I was not too keen on; however, I did find Spresent to be fairly user-friendly with enough creative features to engage my 8th and 9th graders. Following is a brief rundown of my experiences with these programs:
Google Docs: Fairly easy to use overall, difficult to name and rename files, did not always open on my school computer (probably more issues with our school server--meaning it could be a problem for my students)
Zoho: limited background choices, easy to reposition shapes, poor on colors and resizing shapes, overemphasis on spinning objects, liked the ability to add text to the notes pane (good for citing sources-something we emphasize to our students!)
Empresser: No way! Too unlike PowerPoint (which I teach), difficult to grab placeholders, hard to re-open and edit, this might be a program that works best for someone unfamiliar with PowerPoint (hard to break PPT habits)
Spresent: The winner! My Business Venture students could utilize Spresent to present the 4 P's of their Marketing Mix. This would be done as part of mock-presenting their Business Plan to venture capitalists, bankers, or angel investors. I could provide what basic information is required for each slide and let my students go from there.
Positives about Spresent:
--Wide range of text formatting tools (color, style, even transparency which has a convenient slide adjuster)
--Extremely easy to resize placeholders (even easier than PPt)
--Edit undo (useful when trying out a new program and making many mistakes)
--Easy-to-access Help menu with relevant content
--Very easy to log in, retrieve, and edit compared to the other 3 programs
--Similiar animations to PPt with more preset effects
Negatives about Spresent:
--Cannot animate ClipArt
--No bolding
--No line spacing
--Could use a search function for ClipArt
--Limited backgrounds, especially basic colors
Overall, I like Spresent because it offers a creative and easy-to-use option to PPt. It will be interesting to see if my students like it or would rather stay with PPt. My guess is that those most familiar with PPT may have difficulties adjusting to Spresent.

Update on Graphics Programs (Cumulate Draw)

I had a lot of fun putting together my sample diverse portfolio. Once I figured out that saving the .fmd file to my desktop made for easy future retrieval, I could focus on the program itself. I liked the variety of shapes, arrows, lines, and call-outs. Gradient colors and opacity added a great deal to the attractiveness.

It took some time, but I figured how to bring in images from the Web by copying the URL and using the "Insert Image" button. Text was OK to use but could be frustrating due to imprecise centering within the shape and the inability to isolate individual lines within a shape for horizontal centering. Other format features were easy to use although I did have some difficulty in moving and resizing shapes.

I can also envision using Cumulate Draw with my Business Venture students as this free application includes floor and office layouts. My 8th and 9th graders could use these symbols to create site plans and floor layouts for their proposed businesses. This would certainly add authentic learning to their business plan projects.

Reflection on Graphics Programs

Well, like the stereotypical business educator, I am not particularly artsy. My wife, daughter, grandfather, and great-grandmother are/were. As I type this, I find myself looking at the beautiful painting of a hilly area in Bohemia done by my great-grandmother in the 1950s. She must be laughing at my ineptness and lack of enthusiasm for some of our graphics sites. However, I do understand that at least one of these sites will be very useful and exciting for my Financial Life Skills 8th and 9th graders at Falls North.

Let me list and describe these sites in order of worst-to-first for me:
--Sketchcast--could not figure it out with a reasonable effort
--MyDrawings--very difficult for me to get started
--Jackson Pollock--much too abstract with too little control (you know us business-oriented people like to have some control!)
--Queeky--very confusing for me
--Comics Sketch--not my thing but I could see some students utilizing this in Financial Life Skills in our Consumerism unit. Instead of writing a complaint letter, artistic/creative students could use this to draw a comic in which a customer was appropriately complaining about a legitimate issue with a product or service. Students who learn better visually vs. writing could learn more from this. I will "play" with this before we do Consumerism in December. I may even have a student come in during their study hall and sample it before I offer it as an option to all.
--Art Pad--this was the first site that I could actually handle but mostly because I liked the text part of it. I found the brush and bucket parts boring.
--Mr. Picasso Head--fun site because I grew up with the first generation of Mr. Potato Head. I am curious how this site could be used in classes other than art. I am thinking of social studies and projects regarding immigrants, settlers, or workers.
--Cumulate Draw--This one is the winner for me! I can envision using this in our Stock Market unit so that students can visualize what a diverse portfolio (mutual fund) should include. Instead of just talking about companies from different industries, each student could create a graphic organizer, using companies and logos to dress it up.

I am currently playing with this site and have found the variety in sizing, colors, shapes, and lines to be strong with easy use. However, I am struggling with how to save finished files. I could not retrieve practice graphics from Wednesday and I am not clear on how I have been able to save one from today. I hope it continues to be there. I look forward to adding company logos (that is my artistic strong suit) from the Internet to the Cumulate Draw graphic. Great-grandma Julia would be proud!