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.