CEde 520: Nitz--Blog 2

CEDU 520 has been both a fascinating class and process for me. I was pleased with how the planning went as we gradually built upon our IRB proposals over the weeks. The PowerPoint struck me as a particularly useful tool for creating the basic outline for our action research. I teach PowerPoint to my 8th graders, using all of the “bells and whistles” such as transitions, animation, and graphics. It was quite different, and informative, for me to do a simple research-oriented outline where the actual content, not the presentation tools, were of primary importance.

The article summaries have been most helpful in that the research we have read provided examples of how to conduct action research. The three general articles that we started with offered a broad background on technological use in education. Now that I have located my final five articles, I have narrowed my focus to business education and accounting-related pieces that help me to better understand technology-based teaching topics in my field.

I used ProQuest several years ago for my certification work, but I am most impressed with the improved ease of searching. I made great use of the search refining, reference list, and suggested topic tools. No doubt I will continue to use ProQuest for future research and reading in business education and classroom technology use.

Finally, I am very pleased with the excitement that my peers and principal have shown for my action research topic. My principal loves to see students offered more choices and my three approaches to teaching junior high introductory accounting provides well-researched options for future curriculum enhancements. My departmental peers are looking forward to reviewing my research in the areas of student achievement and engagement.

CEdu 520: Nitz--Blog 1

Now that we are several weeks into our Action Research Project, I must say that I am very pleased and comfortable with the process. By following the steps and time line, the process flows very smoothly. I am excited to implement my project and evaluate the results next semester. Actually observing and analyzing the differences in my Business Venture students will be fascinating. Between the accounting unit assessments and surveys, I am sure that the results will be enlightening and most helpful for my future teaching and my students' future learning.

The following positives about this experience come to mind:

• The incredibly supportive sharing with our Stritch peers
• Dr. Simmons' patience and timely feedback has been most helpful and even calming as we all dive in
• The support from my administrators, tech support people, and fellow teachers at Falls North Junior High has been very helpful. I am amazed at how many other teachers have done action research in their grad programs and impressed with how willing they are to offer their counsel for mine.
• Gaining understanding about the differences in experimental and descriptive research projects has helped me with our article summaries and with designing my project
• Using ProQuest has been informative. I have already thought of other units that I can improve by reading research-based online journal articles.
  

The following concerns and challenges come to mind:

• I am comfortable with my introductory accounting lesson plans. However, my steepest learning curve will involve designing reliable and valid student assessments and surveys.
  
• Understanding and interpreting the data collected plus the corresponding statistics
  
• Controlling the extraneous variables with a small sample size
  
• Our study team has worked well together and we have each added much insight to each summary. Our articles, however, have been fairly broad-based regarding technology use in education. Working on my own will be a greater challenge; however, I do look forward to learning more about instructional technology in business education and, in particular, accounting.
  
• Will my students in the control-group class feel disadvantaged if they know that my other classes are learning accounting through technology-based learning tools? Will my students even share these differences with each other?
  

General things that I have learned:

• Make sure to arrive well-rested, fed, and focused to our Oconomowoc class as the amount of material covered is comprehensive and important!
• Stay organized!! Use folders or files for our papers. On the computer, use well-named folders in which to store Word documents and bookmarks to get to pertinent class and research-oriented websites and online articles.
• Take an occasional day away from the action research project. This practice certainly allows me to come back recharged, refocused, and thinking of new ideas.
  

CEdu 534: Week 5-Fun and Games with our New Tech Tools at North!

We have learned so much this week that could be used at our schools with our students, if only we had consistent and more open Internet access. Following are some good and bad issues I had at North Junior High with our newly-learned technology tools:

• Our Internet service was so slow on Friday that it was unusable for my Financial Life Skills (FLS) students with their stock market simulation and related online assignments. Even this morning, I could use it effectively only for my e-mails and Word document work. I could not even update this blog, whether I was in IE or Firefox
• I discovered earlier in the week that my FLS WetPaint wiki had all of the cool widgets (stock ticker, digital clock, YouTube video) blocked. Apparently, our district filter caught up with me after about a week. I had hoped to use this wiki with my class but it will take a herculean effort to get everything unblocked.
• I was pleasantly surprised to see that I could get to some of the online tools that I tried out yesterday at home. I could access the Money Ning I am using for my paper, and All Things Web 2.0 and managemyideas.com for my other paper. I look forward to trying Money Ning soon with my FLS students and managemyideas with my Business Venture students next semester. I am curious to see if eventually these sites get blocked by our automated district filter that our tech people seem to have difficulty handling.
• I now use my RSS feeds to bring the most current investing news to my 1st hour FLS students. My breakfast includes a scan through the various RSS stock and company news feeds. The information is much more current and comprehensive than my previous newspaper reading.
  

On a personal note, I have used Diigo frequently as I access the above websites from home as well as school. It is so convenient to have bookmarks consistently organized and available from any computer with Internet access. I even shared my Black Sox links to help a Loyola of Chicago history major conduct her research on the 1921 and 1924 ballplayer trials.

The News & Observer from Raleigh had this interesting article about a parent denying her 8-year-old daughter Internet access at school. Fascinating piece about differences in viewpoints on the importance of online educational tools. Check it out at this link: Parents, schools at odds over Internet

CEdu 534: Week 4--Podcasts are Fun and Easy!

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I just created a podcast using GCast! I was amazed at how simple it was to log-in, record on my cell phone, and create a post that I have placed in this blog. The only thing that didn't make sense was how to post the podcast on Blogger. The instructions given by GCast were much too detailed and referred to elements of Blogger that do not exist. I finally just copied and pasted the code into the "Edit Html" tab and it worked! I believe that the GCast instructions may need updating.

I found myself very comfortable talking into my cell phone. After listening to the podcast, I discovered that I am my own worst critic. No doubt a second cut will be better. Before I do that, however, I want to test the podcast at school and make sure it works. Who knows if it will be blocked?

GCast podcasts are not blocked at school. I love Tom's idea of using podcasts for sub days. Because we don't have the ability to embed into our school websites, I might be best off to embed a Gcast into my Wetpaint wiki. I would place the URL for the wiki into my links on my school site. Using a cell phone is a great way to quickly create a podcast the night before or the morning of a day we are absent. Our sub and our students then would receive the guidance they need for a productive day in our absence.

CEdu 534: Week 3--RSS and Blogs!

Well, I just figured out how to make a link to my RSS feeds on my Blogger profile page. It took some work and messing around. After "playing" with Bloglines and Google Reader, I must admit that I feel a bit overwhelmed. I do like Google Reader better in terms of navigation and loading RSS feeds. Bloglines does not feel user-friendly to me as I had difficulty in understanding how to load and edit feeds.

Below is a button from Bloglines for my blog. However, I don't understand its purpose as it doesn't link to my feeds.





Oh well, time to move on to other things. I have added more feeds to my Google Reader aggregator. It has been fun and informative to look at recent blog postings, baseball updates with the pennant race this weekend, and business education and finance sites. I can see where my students could make great use of RSS in Financial Life Skills. Keeping current on particular companies, industries, and economic news should be highly engaging and make for great class discussions. I was amazed that students at North have a feed sidebar. I tested the feeds at school this morning, using a student log-in, and was amazed that there were no filter or blocking issues. I was pleased to see how easy it will be for my students to add feeds and then read them. I know they will love this as we start our stock market simulation.

I have been frustrated with creating my wiki so far. I tried Wikispaces first but was not happy with the way in which graphics and formatting were added and modified. Next, I tried PBWiki, knowing that we have had good results with it in our Stritch program so far. However, as I attempted to build it this evening, the site became inaccessible as Firefox claimed there is a site or server problem. I will try again tomorrow but I was all fired up to get the wiki going. I have many ideas of what to add to my NorthFLS wiki and want to try it out.

Speaking of frustrations, I also lost the last section of our research paper for this week. For some reason, Google Docs was unable to save my work. I did save what I had in a Word document but still lost the ending. I think the best approach to take for this problem is to write and save a document in Word, then copy and paste it into Google Docs. No doubt Google Docs is great for its collaboration abilities, but it still is online and may have occasional connection, server, or saving issues.

CEdu 534: Week 2--My Use of Blogs!

I must admit that I have never read blogs, except for those of my peers in this cohort, until this week. To start with, I checked out Bill Michaels' blog at Newsradio620 website. I heard him mention it this past week and, with all of the commotion about Ned Yost's firing, I thought it might be fun to check out. His blog itself was interesting to read with excellent graphics and hyperlinks to related online articles. However, I did not see a method in which to reply/comment.
I dug deeper and checked out a hyperlink for "Message Boards." Here I found SportsBubbler.com which included 2,685 threads and 94,238 posts, just on the Brewers Message Board alone. Wow! Upon further investigation, I saw that person who posted had a profile, often an interesting username, and the number and rankings of their posts. Fascinating stuff!

I also checked out the NSBA Board Buzz blog, hyperlinked to a weekly e-mail I receive called Legal Clips from the National School Boards Association. As a business education teacher, one recent posting caught my attention. Called "Mortgage crisis emphasizes the critical role of financial literacy for today’s generation," this posting offered helpful resources for teachers, not just business educators, to use in teaching their students about spending, saving, and borrowing habits. I will search further for similar business education and financial literacy blogs, especially those that contain postings about current economic and business news.

CEdu 527--Week 5: Data Use and Instructional Leadership

This past week, I found many ways in which to observe and implement what we have learned in CEdu 527. The interpretation and use of test scores in Menomonee Falls was a popular topic this week around our town and Chapter 6 of our text helped prepare me for the beginning of school in three weeks.

First, as Megan and I prepared our Virtual Data Retreat worksheet, I began to understand how our district uses this data. The WINSS website was particularly informative as I learned how to observe trends and look at subgroups in the various content areas. Because Menomonee Falls did not meet AYP in reading and math for 10th graders with special needs, testing data immediately become of personal interest. The timing of this class could not have better as, in the last few weeks, I have received letters from our administration, read articles in the newspapers, and attended our district annual meeting. In all of these, test data and interpretation and courses of action to improve these test scores were all hot topics. I am very glad to see that excuse making was kept to a minimum and that concrete measures were recommended by our administration in order to improve our work with students with disabilities. On a side note, I also used WINSS to help my wife obtain demographic data about her youthful parishioners at her new church in Janesville. It was fascinating to compare not only these demographics, but also WKCE test results of Janesville, Menomonee Falls, and Marshall, the town we lived in from 2000-2005.

Chapter 6 of our text served as an excellent preparation for me with opening day of school only three weeks. I found it helpful, reinforcing, and motivating to read again about meeting all of our students' needs through effective instruction, curriculum mapping, differentiation, assessments, creating community, communication and relevancy. Our superintendent also stressed these best practices last night at our public budget hearing and annual meeting. I look forward to beginning the school year, using many of my new resources as well as continued, and even better, use of past best practices.

CEdu 527--Week 4: Change and Leadership

During this week, I have thought about different situations in life where I was involved in change and leadership. The recent death of the pastor who confirmed and married me particularly brought this home. Pastor Opem encouraged me to become a leader in the church I grew up in. He understood how to do this as a process. First, he asked me to teach Sunday School and serve as a lay reader. He then gradually moved me into positions of leadership such as Sunday School superintendent and lay preacher. As a leader, Pastor Opem recognized how to develop new leaders, but only over an appropriate time period. In addition, he orchestrated the change of a building program. He followed many of Gabriel's adaptive leadership techniques, some of which I have used as Little League president (building a 4 diamond complex) and my wife has used as a pastor (church building projects). When I go to his visitation tomorrow evening, I will be thinking of his leadership and mentoring skills.

Several things from our work this past week were very helpful. First, the Analysis of Change Activity made me realize how important it is to plan ahead, anticipate potential problems, and reflect when involved in the change process. Second, Gabriel's chapter 5 offered so many practical ideas for improving our school climate, morale, and community. His section on how to work through the many problems with our current high stakes testing environment was helpful and made me look forward to helping students in the future with my business vocational license. I also found many tips on how to support my fellow teachers. Even though I am not a department chair, I can still serve as a teacher leader by supporting my peers through collaboration, hallway presence, recognition, social activities, help during difficult times, and communication.

CEdu 527--Week 3: Applying Our Leadership Skills this Week

This past week, I have been in Florida, serving as a coach for my daughter's 16U fastpitch team. I have been able to apply so much of what we have learned in this class in my role as coach for our girls and a leader for our parents. Organizing side trips, meals, line-ups, finances, and schedules has been very interesting and challenging. Using Gabriel's tips on building consensus and mediating conflict has been most helpful on this trip. 13 high school girls, 2 overwhelmed house moms, and parents ranging from hands-off to meddling have provided me with many opportunities to try out what we have learned thus far in this course. I have actually enjoyed the process and the results and find myself quickly growing as a leader.

I have also been able to help my wife as she assumes the leadership role as pastor in her new church in Janesville. The "Who Moved My Cheese" video offered insights into how parishioners might react to the changes going on in their church. In addition, I have offered some of Gabriel's suggestions ("build support by identifying your supporters" "let someone else propose the change" "sit on your hands") regarding some upcoming potentially difficult personnel changes.

As a developing leader and teacher, I found the Beloit list and the Tune In article most helpful in acquiring a better understanding of what people of different ages and generations know and how they have grown up. Helping my dad learn how to use his new laptop in the next few weeks will certainly test my skills on how to relate with and teach a traditionalist (born in 1937) technology tools that are completely foreign to him at this point.

I look forward to applying what we have learned in this course and applied this summer at Falls North Junior High this autumn.

CEdu 527--Week 2: Using What We Learned this Week

In the past, I have wondered how an elective teacher can be involved in using data to improve our district's test scores. After my discussion with our principal, reading the "Guide to Using Data in School Improvement Efforts" document, and reading and replying to our online discussion board, I think I have some ideas.
First, my offer to serve on our next data retreat was enthusiastically received by our principal. Since our 10th graders did not meet AYP in reading and math, I believe that I can be of service to our students by learning more about how to incorporate reading and math standards into our business education curriculum. In addition, I can use my marketing background to help our data retreat group delve further into the demographics involved with our student groups that were low in advanced or proficient test scores.
Second, I plan on serving as a mentor to the maximum of three students again this year. I will request that I be matched with students that need extra support with their core academic areas. Even though I am not an English or math teacher, I can certainly collaborate with teachers from those core content area in order to assist my mentees in areas that they are struggling with.
Finally, our principal gave me a copy of the English Language Arts state standards that will receive greater emphasis this year. Many of these standards can be reinforced through reading and follow-up analysis in our business education curriculum. I have used the Wall Street Journal Classroom Edition for pertinent articles in my Business Venture classes. This could easily be expanded into Financial Life Skills. In particular, Standard A.8.4 (Read to acquire information) stresses comparing, contrasting, and evaluating articles, charts, and tables for accuracy and usefulness. I could easily add lessons that deal with this in our investing unit in FLS and marketing concepts in BV.

CEdu 527--Week 1: My School Leadership Roles

This has been a fascinating week of class in that reading my classmates' replies was so enlightening. All of us appear to be teacher leaders in one role or another and have also experienced a lack of leadership at times with peers or administrators. Sharing and comparing with each other has been most helpful in learning more about leadership.

I felt myself becoming a teacher leader last fall, my third year at Falls North Junior High. Believe it or not, my sense of leadership arose from DodgeBall. I was beginning my second year on our 8th grade WKCE committee. We were looking to find a wrap-up/rewards activity that would motivate our students as well as allow them to blow off some steam after several days of tedious, yet necessary testing. As we were brainstorming, I brought up how well DodgeBall worked as a rewards activity when I was subbing in Marshall. I also mentioned that our new Falls business manager, Jeff Gross (he formerly held the same position in Marshall), and our Marshall superintendent, Dean Gorrell, had participated in a staff/student DodgeBall tournament. This was a big hit in Marshall so I volunteered to organize and lead this in the Falls.

Even though it was a great deal of work, as Gabriel warned in his book, the effort was well worth it. Students and staff loved the competition and team building and we plan on doing it again this fall. I received many compliments from administration, staff, and students and suddenly found myself in a new leadership role, that of DodgeBall commissioner. Our 8th graders were motivated to work hard and get through WKCE because they knew we had a fun and physical activity as a reward. They loved creating boys only, girls only, and coed teams. The team names they created were hilarious and some teams even made up team t-shirts and outfits, similar to the Ben Stiller movie. Our guidance department, with funding from our very supportive principal, made up champion t-shirts that students often proudly wore all of the way until the end of the school year. Our PTSA even jumped on the bandwagon by asking me to organize a DodgeBall tournament for their Friday Frenzy student activity afternoon in February.

My commissionership allowed me to also work more closely with our principal, associate principal, and superintendent. There were legitimate concerns regarding workman's comp if a teacher were to get injured. However, I assuaged those concerns by making sure that all of us "older" teachers had done proper stretching with a warm-up led by one of our highly-regarded phy. ed. teachers. No one got hurt, everything went very well, and I will tweak a few things for this fall such as the sound system, team creation, sign-up deadlines, etc. As a teacher leader, I tried to be very observant during the event so that next year can be even better.

In conclusion, I want to list other areas in which I am a teacher leader:

• E4E Committee: This is a district committee that supports our voc. ed program and connects our staff to the business community. As a former retailer with a voc. ed. certification, I have been able to effectively contribute to this group.
• Softball coach: No doubt that I love this leadership position and learn so much from my fellow coaches.
• Business Education teacher hiring committee: I bring my interviewing and hiring experience to this group and am gratified that our selections thus far have lived up to their tremendous promise.
• Informal technology coach: My fellow bus. ed. teacher, Tami Strong, and I happily serve as teacher leaders by assisting our staff with hardware and software issues, particularly with how they apply to classroom learning.

CEdu 533--Week 5: Building a Website is Addicting!!

After working on my final project Website over the last several days, I found myself hooked on the process and greatly enjoyed the results. Learning how to make tables, using ImageChef and ClockLink, changing hyperlink colors, and linking to investing websites has been an enlightening experience. I now have a much greater appreciation of the work that goes into creating Websites and view sites with a more critical eye.

My only previous experience with HTML is with Classzoom, our district's CMS. The help link in Classzoom allows for only the basics such as underline, bold, and italic. This final project helped me learn more creative HTML options such as alignment, color hex values, ordered and unordered lists, and table hyperlinks, padding, spacing, and borders.

Over the weekend, I will make greater use of graphics in my final project, while always keeping in mind that my audience is my 8th and 9th grade students. I look forward to using this project in my Financial Life Skills classes this fall and eagerly anticipate my students' reviews (positives and negatives) on being introduced to a stock market simulation through web-based learning.

CEdu 533--Week 4: Thoughts on Websites for School Use

As we enter the last two weeks of this course, I am thinking of ways to incorporate what we have learned into my business education classes at North Junior High. Here they are:

• The embedded Google Docs custard demo was fascinating in that I could poll my students on their thoughts about our courses, their research on stocks for our stock market simulation, or sharing their findings when comparison shopping in our budgeting and consumerism unit.



• The website I am creating for our final project will serve as an introduction to StocksQuest, the free online stock market simulation we switched to last semester. Not only could I instruct my students on how to create accounts and execute trades, but this website and linked pages could also be used to teach students about relevant stock and investing terms and strategies. I will be evaluating age-appropriate sites that pass the rules we created in our "What Makes a Good Website?" group project.
  

On a personal note, I checked out the Microsoft Office Templates for Teachers link on John's blog. Our district did not allow the necessary Media ActiveX Control for downloading the Education Credits Tracker or Substitute Teacher Instructions template. I will try to download these useful-looking templates at home. It will be nice to become more organized in these two areas. Thanks for the tip!

Ced533—Week 3: Reflections on Web Design after a 3 Week Hiatus!

After wrapping up the school year and thinking about what we have learned so far in CEd533, I have come up with the following observations:

• I certainly look at websites with a more critical eye now. In particular, I was checking out my daughter’s summer fastpitch team site. As a coach, I sent sponsor information to the web designer. When I checked a week later, the site had not been updated and, in fact, the home page still said it was 2007. I will bring this up to our program’s head coach and let him know that we need to achieve a much higher level of currency.

Here is the link: http://www.worldseriestc.com/home.html

• My brother runs a gas barbeque grill assembly shop and retail outlet in Butler. The two manufacturers that he represents have websites, one of which he would like our study group to critique. As a business education teacher, I will enjoy reviewing this site with my group. I may have more of a managerial approach whereas my group members may have more of a consumer perspective. Both are important to consider.

Here is the link: http://www.modernhomeproducts.com/

• I look forward to learning about CSS, Java, content management systems, and helper software such as Dreamweaver. Many of my business education peers teach Dreamweaver and I need to have a basic understanding of it, whether obtained in this course or in my own work this summer.
• I wonder how easily I will pick up HTML again after being away from it for several weeks. I finally started to grasp it in Week 3 and I am curious how my retention will be. In addition, I have done our HTML work at my school. However, now that the school year is over and I have turned my keys in, I hope that our home computer will work well for my web pages. I did have some difficulties with Filezilla and graphics at home back in Week 1, but that may have been my inexperience more than anything else.

CEd533—Week 2: Wow! HTML is the Hardest Thing I have Tried in our Program!

After a week of playing with HTML and FileZilla, I have a much greater appreciation for those who work with HTML. I am SO looking forward to using an editor in the future. Overall, I struggled with file naming, proper placement of code, and creation of and the URL of a second website linked to my first. I was fortunate to receive help from Tom, Megan, and Jenny of my study group and from my children, Jeff and Beth.

Here are some random observations:

· I never thought of a jump drive as a “portable desktop” until my study group helped me understand that I could save the Filezilla folder and HTML Notepad documents on my jump drive without needing to save them to my home or school computers.

· Also, I was able to download my FileZilla folder to both my school and home computers. I was surprised that it worked at school. At home, the graphics did not load so I did my Web/HTML work in my classroom. As the week moved on, I just used my jump drive and deleted the FileZilla folders from home and school.

· For whatever reason (maybe being 46-years-old?), I did not initially understand the process of opening the Website and the Filezilla files and updating my site. I am OK with the HTML: it is the file and folder sequence that did not click for me. I think I just needed some repetition and help and then it stuck. I will assume that there are easier ways to create Websites!

I was very frustrated with HTML for the following reasons:
· I did not understand where to place the HTML tags in the NotePad document
· I did not understand why I need to resave my NotePad htm documents with different file names
· I do not understand how I can make text BOLD in my Classzoom school website but I cannot do it in FileZilla.
· I could not figure out how to embed my VoiceThread video from our last class into my personal Website.

CEd533: Week 1--How I have seen the Web change Business Education

I have been teaching for only 3-1/2 years and have always used the Web in my classes. However, even in that short time, I have observed some changes in educational Web use which has led to updates in my lesson plans for greater student engagement, timeliness, and relevancy.

Here are some examples from my eighth and ninth grade business education classes:

• In our Marketing unit, I changed advertisement evaluations from print to YouTube. I cannot believe the difference in student excitement and engagement! I now have students eagerly suggesting ads that demonstrate the AIDA (Attention-Interest-Desire-Action) principle and the many advertising approaches (famous person, bandwagon, eye appeal, etc.). More importantly, my students have performed much better on their unit assessments due to how hooked they have become on evaluating ads through YouTube.
• Students have very quick access to answers with the Web. In my recently updated Accounting unit, I asked my Business Venture students to complete an Internet scavenger hunt to find definitions and examples of major income statement and balance sheet components. Following that activity, they created their own financial statements. This was much more successful in achieving student learning than the old study guide/dry erase board method of teaching introductory accounting.
• In Financial Life Skills, my students now use only Internet stock research resources when competing in their stock market simulation. By utilizing JSOnline and Yahoo Finance, students have shifted away from reading the daily newspaper to the point where I cancelled our subscription. This Web access is particularly important for my afternoon classes looking for the most current information on the economy, industries, and companies.
• Finally, I now offer my Financial Life Skills students the choice of either writing a complaint letter or creating a cartoon dialogue using a Web-based cartoon creator from ReadWriteThink.org. Now that I am in my third year of teaching a Consumerism unit, I came to the realization that very few of my students (or their parents) actually write complaint letters. Rather, they take their situation and discuss it on the phone or at the place of business that they are encountering difficulties with. The first two classes that received this option overwhelmingly chose to do the cartoon by a 54-2 margin over the letter. There can be no doubt the Web was a more interesting tool than Word in this situation.
  
  
  
  
  By the way, I used ImageChef. com to create the banner in this blog. I look forward to making greater use of this site as it very easy to use and offers many options regarding color, design, and symbols. In addition, it was exceptionally easy to post this banner to my blog!
  

CEDU 531: My Final Project Process

My final project has been a tremendous learning experience in many ways. I have used VoiceThread to create a three-minute presentation that provides the basic details of a business plan. I choose to role-play my grandfather as he opened his hardware store in 1948. My goal is to show my VoiceThread to my Business Venture students this Wednesday. Then, when we get lab time in several weeks, I will demonstrate how to build a VoiceThread. Finally, after my students research and write their actual business plan in Word for their semester project, they will create a VoiceThread presentation and show it for their final exam.

As I look back on the entire story telling/presentation process, I have come up with several categories of thoughts regarding VoiceThread. They are as follows:

Advantages to VoiceThread
▪ The sharing and comment (both verbal and written) capabilities allow for tremendous communication between people.
▪ Uploading graphics and PowerPoints is very quick and simple. PowerPoint allows for much greater flexibility and variety in slide design.
▪ Adding basic titles to the presentation and each slide is simple.

Disadvantages to VoiceThread
▪ No transitions or animation.
▪ No soundtrack except for playing sounds into the microphone.
▪ I encountered many difficulties in voice recording, some of which may be hardware or software issues vs. VoiceThread issues. At school, only the rear jack worked for recording. At home, no microphone jacks worked. At my brother’s office, sound would only record for 4-5 seconds and then cut out. The VoiceThread tutorial offered no useful assistance.
▪ I could only load complete PowerPoint presentations into VoiceThread. This meant for extra slide work until I figured out that I could create two PowerPoints, one for slides currently in progress and the other for slides done and uploaded.

Interesting aspects to learning presentation hardware and software use
▪ Windows Movie Maker does not save into our home directories at North Junior High. We can only save to the desktop, which creates security issues as 8th and 9th graders using the same computer could alter the Movie Maker file.
▪ Presentation rubric creation was much simpler than I thought it would be, thanks to online resources such as RubiStar.
▪ I learned how important pixel size is when striving for quality graphics.
▪ I enjoyed sharing my family history with my dad and uncle when they allowed me to scan my grandfather’s pictures and stationary into my VoiceThread.
▪ I learned what tags are all about and tested mine for their effectiveness.

CEDU 531--Week 4: How My Students and I Can Improve our Presentations!

As we have progressed through this class, I realize how many new things I have learned (podcasts, photosharing, online multimedia tools and rubrics, etc.) and how I need to unlearn some presentation methods that I have used for many years. In particular, Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds (pictured here) has opened my eyes to more effective presentation methods for my teaching. I now eagerly anticipate conveying these design techniques to my students. At North Junior High, we teach non-linear PowerPoint in our 8th grade Computer Applications course and students continue to use this presentation tool in our business classes as well as science, English, and social studies.

Following are some areas, suggested by Reynolds, in which I can improve my presentation methods:
· “Quote This”—I have never used quotes before but now understand how short quotes add credibility to presentations.
· Image websites—Reynolds’ uses images from iStockphoto.com throughout our text. They certainly captured my attention and I will investigate this site as well as other recommended sites.
· “Masking tape and paper note”—What a great way to display short text passages with visuals!
· Bullet points—minimize!! Use for summarizing only. This runs against my past practices and certainly goes against what we typically teach our 8th and 9th graders to do. I will de-emphasize bullet points when my students create their Business Plan VoiceThreads this June.
· Signal-to-Noise Ratio—delete irrelevant components of a presentation. Always take a hard look at what you are including in text and graphics.
· Text within Images—I will place text within larger photos more often. Reynolds’ examples were helpful.
· Empty Space—I have heard this theory before when creating print ads. It certainly applies to effective presentations.
· Balance—I have always made my slides symmetrical. Time to mix in some asymmetrical slides!

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CEDU 531--Week 3: Storytelling in Business Education

For the last several years, all of my Business Venture students have written Entrepreneur Profiles in which they research famous entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates, Mary Kay Ash, Kimora Lee Simmons, and Mark Cuban. My eight and ninth graders are required to research the person’s background information (childhood, education, previous business/career experiences, socioeconomic status), company, ideas, and products/services. Students also share if the entrepreneur succeeded right away and if they solved a problem in society and/or for him or herself. Finally, students analyze the importance of their entrepreneur.

I have considered allowing students the option to create PowerPoints rather than Word documents. Several asked for this choice this semester and they did nice work, both in the content as well as in their class presentation. However, I now recognize how this assignment would be perfect for storytelling. Students could use VoiceThread or JumpCut to share the story of their entrepreneur’s background, company, success, and importance. They could even role-play in the first person as they add voiceover text to their slides. As discussed in our last grad course, authenticity and the LoTI level would be greatly increased as students presented their VoiceThreads or JumpCuts to their peers.

At North Junior High, we place a strong emphasis on providing students with options. In this case, I would allow students to create their Entrepreneur Profile in Word, PowerPoint, VoiceThread, or JumpCut. The latter three would require a class presentation. I believe that this lesson/assignment about famous entrepreneurs (their ideas, perseverance, management skills, creativity, etc.) would be best learned if students could fully immerse themselves in a method that best matches their learning styles.

CEDU 531--Week 2: VideoThread in Business Education

http://voicethread.com/#b101929

After we completed our Rosa Parks group VoiceThread last Tuesday, it occurred to me that my Business Venture students could utilize this multimedia tool as a most engaging method in which to present their business plans. This culminating project has always been done in Word. Students enjoy this; however, I believe they will be more engaged if they can use pictures of their business layout and products, maps of their location, sample ads, and organizational charts for their personnel. Adding their voices on top of these graphics will create an authentic assessment as their peer audience raises the LOTI level.

In order to prepare for this new multimedia learning opportunity, I will need to do the following:
▪ Work with our building tech coordinator to get microphones. In addition, she and I will need to come up with a game plan on e-mail addresses required for student VoiceThread registration. My initial thoughts are Gaggle, Gmail, or students’ own existing e-mail addresses. She can advise me on which option is most in line with our district technology policies and budget.
▪ Make sure students do not get blocked from the VoiceThread site. Our filter will block new sites once students start to use them.
▪ Create my own business plan VoiceThread. I may use my grandfather’s stories of his gas station in the Third Ward and/or his hardware store in Wauwatosa. I cannot wait to try this out!
▪ Decide how much I will shorten the Word portion of the project. As recommended in our textbook by Garr Reynolds, this document would serve to provide detailed elements that connect to the VoiceThread.
▪ Decide if the Word portion will make up the business plan grade and the VoiceThread serve as the exam grade. These would serve as assessments of all units in Business Venture.

CEDU 531--Week 1: How Might I Use Digital Storytelling in Class?

When I first reviewed our course description, I was not sure how an 8th and 9th grade business education teacher could utilize digital storytelling in our Business Venture and Financial Life Skills classes at Menomonee Falls North Junior High. However, after reading Chapters 1 and 2 of DigiTales, I now have some ideas that will strongly engage my students.

In Business Venture, an introductory business course, I might include digital storytelling in the following areas:

• Entrepreneur Profile: Rather than writing a profile of a famous entrepreneur (Kimora Lee Simmons, Ray Kroc, Bill Gates, Debbi Fields, etc.) in Word or creating a PowerPoint presentation about their life, my students could create a digital story that covers the entrepreneur's cultural, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds, childhood, education, previous business/career experiences, company, ideas, products, and/or inventions. In addition, my students could tell stories of their subject's previous business failures and successes. Finally, students could evaluate the importance of their entrepreneur and discuss what, if any, problems their businessperson solved in society and if we are better off because of them.


• Local Business Field Trip: Upon their return from our walking field trip to a nearby entrepreneur's business, my students could tell the story of that person's role in management, marketing, human resources, and finance/accounting. Telling the story of the start of the entrepreneur's career and business would also be an authentic assessment of student learning.

In Financial Life Skills, storytelling could be used in the following units:

• Budget Project: Students would interview their parents or guardians and uncover the story of how they analyze their monthly income and expenses. A greater understanding of the complexities of personal finance and a sense of empathy for their caregivers would be results.
• Consumerism: Instead of writing fictitious customer complaint letters, students could use digital multimedia stories to tell about real complaint situations that they or their families have encountered. In lieu of an actual occurrence, students could also create scenarios, as suggested by our author, Bernajean Porter, on page 19 of her book. These scenarios would envision appropriate and effective complaints, leading to positive consumer results.
• Identity Theft/Phishing: After learning how to avoid identity theft and phishing attempts, my students could create stories that describe how consumers are adversely affected by these negative events. Students would reinforce avoidance techniques and also understand the consequences suffered by identity theft and phishing victims.

Now that I have brainstormed these ideas, I look forward to trying some out with my students in order to increase the relevancy of their learning. I also believe this storytelling increases the LOTi level as students share their creations with their peers, families, and local businesspeople.

CEdu 521 Week 5: Final Project Connections

Going into Week 5 of our class, I thought that the time spent listening to our peers' final project presentations might be tedious and somewhat irrelevant. I am glad to state that I was wrong with those preconceptions! I found many ideas in our unit plans that I can take back to my business students at Falls North. This sharing of relevant technology use and authenticity proved to be most valuable.

Some of the connections I made to improve my students' future learning in Business Venture and Financial Life Skills are as follows:

• Jodi's "Adventures in Buying a Gift" unit had many differentiation suggestions that would easily expand this project beyond special education and into regular education, gifted and talented, and ELL. The product research, consumerism elements, budgeting connections, and presentation possibilities would all work very well for my Financial Life Skills students. The process of gift buying could be modified to fit the consumer purchasing decision lesson in our Business Venture marketing unit. Jodi's use of technology (PowerPoint, greeting card creation, digital pictures, calculations, etc.) and authenticity was strong and made me think further on how to use these tools for our Business Venture entrepreneur profiles and business plans. I look forward to adding more options to assignments that were previously done only in Word plus adding audiences to increase my students' efforts.
  
• Lori's Sickle Cell Anemia unit reinforced my previous brainstorming in the area of presentations. In addition, even though Lori is working with first graders, her research and writing ideas (with much sharing) could certainly be expanded for my junior high students. Finally, both Jodi's and Lori's projects had strong altruistic elements as students were asked to think of others (gift recipients and children with sickle cell anemia). As a business teacher, I strive to add this outward view as often as possible when dealing with ethics, charitable contributions within a budget, and honesty and empathy in interpersonal business relationships.
  

An additional connection that I made was to take my 8th and 9th grade introductory accounting unit and share it with our Menomonee Falls High School accounting teacher. Sara is a fantastic educator who never ceases to make accounting engaging and authentic to her students. I would like Business Venture to serve as a "feeder" to her program by "hooking" my students on accounting. I look forward to Sara's feedback and ideas!

CEdu 521 Week 4: Collaboration and So Much More!

CEdu 521 has been a most helpful course in several areas. First, as mentioned in our initial class, we indeed are learning less new material but are now applying what we have learned in our previous courses. Developing a project unit has been most exciting as we add authenticity and relevancy. I cannot wait to introduce my new accounting unit! While looking at the units I teach in Financial Life Skills and Business Venture, I am discovering so many methods to increase the LoTI and “Give a Darn” index. As a business education teacher, I continually strive to engage my students by adding value and purpose to our elective courses. CEdu 521 is helping me do this.

Not only is our course content making me a more proficient teacher, but the high level of collaboration in our cohort is also helping. I sense the enthusiasm we all have to try out our new projects/units. In addition, it is most enlightening to share our work with our study groups. I have learned so much from Tom and Megan. I never would have thought that working with a high school math teacher and a kindergarten teacher would have been helpful to my business teaching. However, they have broadened my view of education and made me think more creatively. I would not be using Inspiration with my 8th and 9th graders without Megan or be starting the process of purchasing a SMART Board without both Tom and Megan’s input. Every week, we help each other process what we have learned. This week, I needed help in developing a rubric and, as always, Tom and Megan came through!

Finally, it is always helpful to hear what other teachers in our cohort, regardless of district, age level, or subject, encounter with their students, parents, peers, district, administrators, tech people, schedules, etc.

CEdu 521 Week 3: So Much to Apply to North Business Classes!

Upon completion of our third week of class, I find my mind creatively spinning with curriculum and project ideas for my Falls North Junior High business classes. I am using Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives for direction as I formulate new lessons/projects and take existing lessons and expand them into technology-based projects. The taxonomy documents we received in session 3 and the ensuing discussions helped me focus on adding more higher-order thinking skill activities to our projects and assessments.

Following are some brainstorming ideas:

1. Entrepreneur Profile: In the past, students have written a research paper in Word. In order to offer my students more choices to better meet their learning styles, I am adding the options to create and present a PowerPoint or role play and videotape and present a short monologue or skit. In both cases, I will create additional rubrics, for both the research element and the presentation itself. I am curious to see how many students take the opportunity to create something other than a Word document. Research can be done with online resources recommended by our school library or with books. In the past, students have written only about famous entrepreneurs in Word. I am thinking about asking my students if they would also be interested in interviewing a local businessperson or a relative/neighbor/friend who is an entrepreneur. I would provide guidance on appropriate questions to ask. Students who chose this authentic option would then pick from a Word document, PowerPoint, or videotape. The last two options would be presented to the class, causing an increase in the LoTI level.
2. Business Plan: This culminating semester project will undergo an increase in the LoTI level by simply adding a presentation to the class and/or local entrepreneurs. The business plan itself is a Word document, but students could create and present a brief, summarizing PowerPoint. In order to also increase the authenticity, students would be assessed not only on the presentation content, but also on their dress, communication skills, and persuasiveness as they seek start-up money from students and/or businesspeople posing as venture capitalists and angel investors. In fact, this sounds so exciting that I am considering it as a replacement for our scantron/essay final exam. By covering all of our units (marketing, human resources, finances, etc.), this will serve as an engaging, summative assessment.
   

The next step that I need to learn is creating valid and reliable assessments for projects. Our text gave me some ideas, but I look forward to further discussions with our cohort. In addition, I have begun collaboration with our Menomonee Falls High School entrepreneur teacher and with an eighth grade English teacher at North. At our in-service last Monday, I worked with both teachers on common assessments. I learned a great deal on project presentation assessments and was pleased to share what I have used successfully in the past.

CEdu 521 Week 2: Going Deeper into LoTI and Technology Tools

Our second week of class offered many ideas for increasing student engagement through use of technology tools in my business classes at Falls North Junior High. As this semester progresses, I look forward to enhancing the learning experiences of my 8th and 9th graders. Here are some ideas that came out of our class:

• Allow students to try Google SMS on their cell phones in order to get stock quotes for our new stock market simulation. As the "Pay Attention" You Tube video stated, "If you're not using cell phones to teach, you should be." I know my students will love this activity and get hooked on their newly-learned investing skills.
• Allow my students to present their Entrepreneur Profiles using PowerPoint. As we discussed in class, it is one thing to create a PowerPoint; it is altogether a higher level of learning if students present their knowledge to their peers. In other words, why assign a PowerPoint unless it will have an audience? We do student presentations in Computer Applications (Me and Trivia PowerPoint projects) and now it is time to expand this into Business Venture.
  
• The review of the various teaching LoTI scenarios and quotes helped me understand how to make activities more authentic. The comments I received on the Business Venture franchise project blog posting will take the LoTI level up significantly by involving community business people . No doubt my students will increase the quality of their work, knowing that adults will be reviewing their franchise proposals.
  
• The Technology Tool Showcase jigsaw activity was most helpful in that it expanded my knowledge of technology tools way beyond the Microsoft Office tools I currently use. During this semester and upcoming summer, I will take time to learn more about Inspiration, SMART Boards, and Digital Video so that I can incorporate these exciting, yet foreign, tools into many of my lesson plans. Incidentally, our brief discussion of the COW made me wonder why our school only has 16 laptops in its COW when most classes at North have 22-28 students. How much more useful would the COW be if all students working on an activity could use a laptop?

In the weeks to come, I am excited to try out more technology tools with my North students in both our project and Work Sample 1. In addition, I look forward to learning about assessments of technology-based activities and projects.

Text: Chapter 1--Thoughts on Project-Based Multimedia Learning

I absolutely loved the way Chapter 1 was introduced. What better thing for teachers to see and hear than a "completely engrossed" classroom of students? The excitement in the air, the purposeful movement of students and the engaged discussions are a teacher's dream scenario.

As I began reading this book, I was hoping to quickly find a definition of multimedia. I had some idea but was happy when our authors explained it on page 2 as the ". . . integration of media objects such as text, graphics, video, animation, and sound." In the multimedia projects I have incorporated into my junior high business education curriculum, I have only used text, graphics, and animation. I am now brainstorming how to add video and sound to enhance my students' learning. I will be working more closely with our school's tech coordinator in these areas. In addition, I would like to go beyond the typical PowerPoint and find out how our district supports (if it does at all) Web site creation. Our LoTI discussion made my realize how important audiences are to increasing student effort and involvement. Posting student work on the Internet would certainly achieve higher-level LoTI goals.

Several other sections of Chapter 1 caught my attention. Some of the seven dimensions of project-based multimedia learning made me think as follows:

• Business educators are fortunate to have much of their curriculum contain strong real-world connections. Our Budget Project, checkbook simulation, and Business Plan units all possess this attribute.
• Student decision-making is also crucial. I intend on expanding the options available for the Entrepreneur Profile (previously just a Word document) to PowerPoint presentations or videotaped role-playing of famous entreprenuers. I will also allow my students to choose between a famous entrepreneur such as Kimora Lee Simmons, Bill Gates, Mrs. Fields, or Ray Kroc or a relative that started their own business. I will model a combination of these options by preparing a PowerPoint detailing my grandfather's entrepreneurial endeavors in the service station and hardware businesses. Even as a 46-year-old, I find these choices to be much more engaging than a research paper on Andrew Carnegie.
• I look forward to learning how to assess multimedia projects with more competency. Chapter 6 will be most helpful to me.
• I will need to investigate HyperStudio, Kid Pix, and Netscape Composer in order to expand my "toolbox" of multimedia tools. There appears to be more out there (hopefully suitable for my eighth and ninth graders) besides PowerPoint.

Finally, my retail management experience confirmed our authors' concept of "value added" when using project-based multimedia learning. It is crucial that our students learn the three skills sets (hard, soft, and computer literacy) for future job success. As a hiring manager, I saw how necessary these competencies were. Project-based multimedia learning greatly enhances the acquisition of these skills. I look forward to becoming a part of this important educational process that also places crucial emphasis on differentiation and higher-order thinking skills.

A Multimedia Project to Move Up the LoTI Ladder: Business Ownership: The Franchise Option

In our Business Venture course at North Junior High, we have included a lesson on franchising as an entrepreneurial option. This EconEdLink (part of Thinkfinity) online activity serves as a precursor to our Business Plan unit as it provides an engaging method for students to learn more about franchises that they are already very familiar with and excited about. Check out this Cold Stone Creamery link at Entrepreneur.com to see what my students discover.

Here is the teacher link.

Here is the student link. I provide the worksheet in Activity 3 as a handout to be completed as an assessment.

I have also used this Word file (converted to a Google.doc) to reinforce what students have learned about franchises.

In my first two years at North, I have found this lesson to be a successful learning experience for my eighth and ninth graders but I would like to move it up to a higher LoTI level. My experience indicates that this multimedia lesson is currently at Level 3 as it involves online research with an effective progression of tasks. The Activity 3 worksheet involves comparison and analysis.

CEdu 521: Week 1 of Learning with Technology: Effective Teaching Strategies

I am very excited to start CEdu 521 because it feels like the right time to take the next step in our graduate school process. We certainly have learned many new technology tools since we began this program in October. Now, as was emphasized in class, we need to apply this new knowledge in authentic and effective learning strategies for our students.

As a business education teacher, I now recognize many opportunities to move my students to higher LoTI levels. The LoTI PowerPoint, survey, and Project Analysis Guide all brought me to the realization of how much more I can do in this area. During class Tuesday night, I found myself constantly brainstorming on how to enhance many class computer projects at North Junior High. Our Financial Life Skills Budget Project could be enhanced by allowing students to share in a wiki or blog (with fellow students and/or parents) if they were within budget and why or why not. They could also share what surprises and decisions they encountered while also thinking about what changes they would make in future months. Until last night, I have never thought about how important an audience would be in raising the Budget Project from LoTI Level 3 to Level 4. The Project Analysis Guide handout was right on when it stated, ". . . real audiences will intentionally raise the level of expectation for the quality of student work."

The main hurdle to this student sharing would be finding a method that meets the approval of our building and district tech people. We use Gaggle's standard paid subscription service for e-mail units in our 8th grade Computer Applications course. Gaggle also has a blog feature that we have not used at North. I will pursue this option, in terms of approval and any additional costs. The real-life skills my students learn when preparing their own budget (seeking apartments, cars, clothes, food, personal items, insurance, loans, etc.) is something they love to share verbally with neighboring students in the lab. The ability to share this decison-making process online with their peers and parents and post comments would be such a real-world, authentic addition to the Budget Project.

The "Hook" for my First Work Sample

As I prepare my first work sample, I have gone back to my teacher certification days to find a "hook" that will get my students excited about our new Human Resources unit. In this introductory lesson for my 8th and 9th grade Business Venture students, I will play the ending of a Celebrity Apprentice show with Donald Trump, Gene Simmons, Jennie Finch, and Omarosa. Most of my students have watched this show and know who the four celebrities are. In order to get this You Tube clip through our district filter, I have embedded it in my blog. In addition, in order to guarantee appropriateness, I will play the clip from 8:25 to the end (about 1.5 minutes). This will eliminate some poor language from Trump. Most importantly, this clip will get students thinking about the seriousness of firing an employee and lead into an introductory discussion about best practices in the human resources field.

Technology Integration Spreads at Falls North Junior High!

I was so pleased to have one of my Financial Life Skills students ask how to access the Comic Creator web page by Read-Write-Think of Thinkfinity. This ninth grader was so hooked on how the site worked for our consumer complaint activity that she demonstrated it for her social studies teacher. Now, this teacher utilizes this highly-creative site for a dictator assignment. This situation certainly indicates how engaged students become when we integrate technology into our curriculum! In addition, higher-order thinking skills are better utilized with activities of this nature.

Check out Comic Creator at this link.

The Final Week of CEdu 525: Using the Internet and Web as a Curricular Resource

Upon completion of our last week of CEdu 525, I find myself brimming with ideas for our Business Education classes at Falls North Junior High. All four courses that I teach are highly conducive to relevant online curriculum use. I am looking forward to applying the Website Evaluation assignment from Session 2 to my Business Venture course. I dearly want to hook my students on accounting and believe that many of the ten evaluated Web sites, particularly Thinkfinity lesson plans and links, will accomplish that. Weaving these online resources with class discussions and real-life business examples (including those from my family's hardware store and my students' family's businesses) will bring accounting, normally a very dry topic, to life! I am also eagerly anticipating incorporating my newly-created Marketing Scavenger Hunt as an introduction to our Marketing unit. My eighth and ninth graders love the challenge of these educational tools and learn so much in a more engaging method. Finally, I will add cyberbullying to the list of topics we cover in the Internet safety unit for 8th grade Computer Applications. I did not realize the seriousness and prevalence of this problem.

Elements of Week 4 that I found helpful include the following:

• Quizlab was fun to try out. We use QUIA (a paid subscription) in the Falls and it was interesting to compare the pros and cons of both. QUIA appears more powerful but I am sure that QuizLab would be a stronger alternative in its paid version. I am converting most of our quizzes and tests to online assessment tools. Students seem to enjoy these more than paper/pencil documents because they provide instant feedback that I add as part of the answering process.
  
• WebQuests are fun to investigate. I found several that I may try as a precursor to our Business Venture business plan project. One involved a chocolate dessert cafe start-up proposal (perfect for my constantly-hungry teens!). Another dealt with monopoly issues for Microsoft, a perfect tie-in with our Competition and Business Types unit.
• The Creative Commons information was helpful to know. I did not realize that there is a legitimately "grey area" that serves as a helpful alternative to the previously "black and white" area of educational copyright issues. There is no doubt that technology has pushed educators to reevaluate traditional copyright law.

All in all, I found great value in CEdu 525 because it provided us with so many online resources that we can take back to our classrooms for the benefit of our students' learning.

North Jr. High Financial Life Skills Exit Survey

At the end of the last semester, I used QUIA to create an online exit survey for my 8th and 9th grade Financial Life Skills students. Quia, a subscription site for creating online activities, quizzes, and class pages, allows their surveys to be exported into Excel. I could not figure out how to allow the survey results to be viewed in my blog until Louie suggested importing the Excel spreadsheet into Google Docs and inserting that link into this blog.
It worked and here are the results! Exit Survey
I was pleased with how I could discover what my students learned, liked, and disliked in FLS. My department will use this information to continue making improvements in the curriculum and making our activities and units more engaging.

Internet Safety and Social Networks Reflection

Our Facebook experiences were most enlightening to me. I now understand how our students can become so "hooked" on social networks. I always thought it was rather strange and unproductive behavior and could not understand why teens these days do not communicate via phone. After experimenting with Facebook and discovering how creative you can be, I now understand the allure. By combining graphics, links, messaging, networks, videos, and other applications, I can see why our students rarely use a phone. This should alert teachers to the fact that a lecture will typically not engage our students. Adding technology and constructivist activities to our lesson plans is a must! By the way, I was interested to discover that 5 of my classmates (out of about 400) from my Brookfield East graduating class of 1979 are on Facebook. That is 5 more than I would have expected 10 days ago. Now, I am surprised that more are not on Facebook.

Learning about social networks also has made my wife and I think about how we can use these in our professions. As a teacher and a preacher, how can Facebook and MySpace be utilized to better connect with teens and help them learn? We will be sharing ideas with other teachers and ministers in the near future.

Other elements of Week 3 in Cedu525 that caught my attention were the following:

• The usefulness of BrainPop . I will inquire if my district has considered this site. The Social Studies area had several interesting economics/personal finance sections that could be applied to my Financial Life Skills curriculum.
  
• The seriousness of cyberbullying. As a parent, softball coach, teacher, and mentor, I need to be aware of how vicious this can become and how it can dramatically affect a teen's emotional well-being and academic and social growth. I am now better prepared to appropriately respond to instances of cyberbullying.
• The importance of minimizing information given online. The videos last Tuesday drove home how easy it is for a teen to unknowingly give pieces of personal information that could lead them into serious trouble. I will share this with my 8th grade Computer Applications students!
  

Experimenting with my Blog!

Before I post my weekly reflection, I thought I would try something new in this section. I chose to embed a video, as Louie demonstrated last Tuesday. I selected a "Field Of Dreams" YouTube clip for several reasons. First, I love the movie because of the way it brings happiness to the banned Black Sox. Second, Kevin Costner, Amy Madigan, Burt Lancaster, and James Earl Jones are fantastic. Third, I have visited the film site in Dyersville, Iowa, and can almost feel the presence of the ghost players walking out of the tall corn. Finally, this clip hits upon the importance of hearing the call to our profession, as Doc "Moonlight" Graham does in this scene. Here is the video:



After 20 fascinating and fun years in retailing, I made my career change and have never regretted it. I believe I am "making a difference" with my students, just as Doc Graham made a difference in saving the little girl.

Check out this picture from the summer of 2006 when our summer fastpitch team visited the movie site. Fortunately, 38 and 17 did reappear!

Student Survey Results

My 8th and 9th grade Financial Life Skills participated in the online exit survey that I mentioned last week. The process and results were fascinating. 57 students took the survey (built on QUIA, a paid subscription), providing our department with valuable feedback for making the course better. I closely observed my students as they worked online and was impressed with their seriousness and engagement.

Overall, students enjoyed coming to class (77% felt positive or very positive) and 80% felt that the pace of the course was just right. The Budget unit was most popular and the Checkbooks unit was least. I could view and print the results as QUIA compiled and calculated the responses. Just like online quiz grading, I saved time in reading and analyzing.

The feedback that I valued the most for our grad program were the following free responses:

• "I liked coming in and doing stuff on the computers"
• "going to the lab"
• "keep the online quizzes"
• "Stock Market Simulation and the online tests
• "we learn a lot because of the other teaching methods like powerpoints"
• "I liked the credit unit the least because we were never in the lab"

These comments certainly indicate that students were more engaged and enjoyed learning more with technology-based activities. I will strive to continue creating more of these lessons.

Week 2: So Many Classroom Applications-So Little Classroom Time!

Our second week of CEDu 525 presented me with so many lesson ideas that I am challenged to find the classroom time to apply them all. My peer at Falls North Junior High also took this Stritch graduate program several years ago. Now that I review her lesson planning, I recognize that she introduces one new application in every unit in our Financial Life Skills (FLS) and Computer Applications (CAps) courses. This pacing allows for important reflection and adjustments. I will be sure to do this with my Business Venture (BV)course during the second semester.

In BV , I am seeking to provide more engaging, technology-based lessons for my students, particularly in marketing, human resources, and accounting. As I have observed in FLS, they love to learn through scavenger hunts, spreadsheets, PowerPoints, webquests, online cloze and anticipation guides, and Web-based review games, quizzes, and surveys. The Customer Complaint Cartoon was a huge hit, as evidenced by the high quality work, and tremendous enthusiasm. The cartoons were a joy to grade and more accurately reflect how consumers present problems (conversations over letters) with products and services in the retail marketplace. I will continue to create new Web-based lessons for FLS and BV.

Several things that we did in class last Tuesday were most helpful to me. They are as follows:

• Reading a classmate's blog was useful as it became evident that we all have similar reactions and reflections. In addition, it is important to learn how teachers in other academic areas and age levels apply what we are gaining from CEDu 525.
  
• I enjoyed observing other scavenger hunts because I saw new methods of using search tools, both within a particular website and on the Web.
  
• The Thinkfinity lesson plan sharing was interesting as I learned how Katie applied a lesson plan to her West Allis German students. I must look beyond only EconEdLink for lesson plans. Other Thinkfinity resources are excellent, as demonstrated by the success of the Cartoon Creator from ReadWriteThink in my FLS classes.
• On Wednesday morning during my first prep, I asked several students visiting from study hall to check out a few search engines other than Google. I was impressed with the many search options out there and want my CAps students to investigate a metasearch. To my dismay, Ask, AskJr, and Dogpile were all blocked. I immediately called our building tech person and she jumped on it with our central office. We both know Dogpile and Ask had been available and are curious to discover why they have been blocked. This also reinforced that a teacher must always check website links just before students do. I have found numerous blocked or dead links this fall and have fixed them before students began their work.
  
• I will check out some of the other creative websites such as Toondo. These may even be better than Cartoon Creator in the areas of number of panels and saving capabilities.
  
• The educational sites we explored will prove useful in the near future. In particular, I will come back to Blue Web'n for business education website resources as I develop my technology-based BV lessons.
  
• The online quiz sites were interesting for me to compare to QUIA, the subscription service we use in the Falls. Some of the week 2 links were more entertaining than educational. However, Quizlet (a free site!!) provided an engaging method in which to learn vocabulary. I can envision using this for difficult new terms in accounting.
• BrainPop has great potential for my business classes. I am confident that my students would love it. I will explore it in my extra time during final exams this week. The social studies section has several business/personal finance options.
  

In conclusion, I must say that I love Son of Citation for its ability to create APA citations, unlike EasyBib. I cannot imagine how much time I would have saved citing sources in past schooling and research. Facebook was fascinating and allowed me to see how people can get hooked on social networks as they eagerly anticipate who they find and then communicate with. I even found that 5 of my Brookfield East classmates from 1979 are on Facebook. It is truly amazing how much we learn every week in this Stritch grad program (and have fun doing it!).

Week 1--CEDU525--Using the Internet and Web as a Curricular Resource

I enjoyed Week 1 of our new class because it provided many new curriculum resources for my 8th and 9th graders at Falls North. I am making every attempt to integrate technology into all of our Financial Life Skills and Business Venture (intro to bus. course) units. Having the time to check out Thinkfinity in greater depth was most helpful in that I have not used this resource in over a year and was amazed at the many new lessons. Not only did EconEdLink contain many new lesson plans, but other Thinkfinity partners such as ReadWriteThink had lessons and learning tools that I will use. ReadWriteThink has a search engine with limits that include my grade level and economics. In addition, its Cartoon Creator went over exceptionally well with my Financial Life Skills students. Previously, these students wrote a consumer complaint letter in Word. In an effort to provide greater differentiation, I gave my students the choice of creating a verbal complaint scenario in Cartoon Creator or writing the letter. Amazingly, 54 of my 56 students chose the cartoon. My principal, Barb Tays, was observing my lesson that day and she is a strong advocate of providing options to our students. By doing so, we can offer activities that best match our students' various learning styles.

The survey that we did in class made me think to create an exit survey for my FLS students next Friday. That will be our last day in the computer lab for this semester and all of us North FLS teachers value student feedback in order to make the course more engaging. I have used QUIA for quizzes and activities and will use its survey creator for the first time. I am interested to see the survey statistical results in addition to the written comments from my students. QUIA is a subscription site that our district pays for. Students love the activities and have indicated that they prefer on-line quizzes over paper.

Here is the link to the survey:

http://www.quia.com/sv/152434.html

Feel free to try it. I will delete any responses next Friday morning before my students take the survey.

Finally, I enjoyed the Internet Scavenger Hunt. The competitive element appeals to many students and learning through technology is much more engaging than overheads, lectures, etc. I have used scavenger hunts in our FLS banking, credit, insurance, tax, and consumer units. I will be adding them to my BV units. Marketing will be the first one as it lends itself to searches regarding promotions, advertising, slogans, logos, and retailing. 8th and 9th graders love these topics and will become hooked on marketing through Internet searches.