CEDu581 Computer Architecture: Week 3

This was a fascinating week (or 4 weeks) because so much of what we worked on in CEDu581 tied in with what we have just done at Falls North Junior High.

First, researching Windows 7 made me wonder about our school's move from Office 2003 to Office 2007 next fall. I had several questions. I wondered if Office 2007 is compatible with Windows XP. The MS website answered that affirmatively. For some reason, I thought that Vista was necessary for Office 2007. This then made me wonder what our district is doing with our operating system. That was promptly answered by our tech people who said that we will stay with XP next year because our application launcher, Zenworks, supports XP. If Zenworks gets updated the following year, then we will move to Windows 7, skipping Vista entirely. My research on Windows 7, however, allowed me to understand that 7 is really just an upgraded version of Vista. Thanks to the Components and Linux projects, I now have a much better understanding of operating systems versus application software programs.

The second area that I learned a great deal about over these past few weeks is presentation software. My students used MS Photo Story, with fantastic results, as a method to present their business plans. Our district just installed Photo Story in our labs at North and I used this program instead of Voice Thread from last year. Our tech people wanted me to "play" with this program and report back to them. My students loved it because it was so easy to use and I loved it because my students were so engaged in creating their presentations! What an effective method for summative assessment when students cover all aspects of our business units in their Photo Story. My review of the MS Photo Story website was intriquing because the program is a free download and is marketed as "make show-and-tell cool again." As a business education teacher, I love this type of bandwagon marketing.

While working on our Components project, I thought it might be fun to try out Slide Rocket. After unsuccessfully trying to access this online program at home, I did achieve success at school. For some reason, my home computer said that every one of my email addresses already existed, preventing me from logging in. At school, no problem. I like Slide Rocket more than Voice Thread because of its superb animations and easier navigation tools. Slide Rocket also was much quicker to make a presentation with and the log-in was easier.

Finally, I enjoyed watching part 3 of Revenge of the Nerds. I find Steven Jobs fascinating, particularly with the introduction of the Mac back in 1984. I had just shown that famous one-time Super Bowl/Big Brother ad in my marketing unit and it was helpful to me to understand the computer innovation background behind the ad. Competition and how it affects companies and their CEOs never ceases to amaze me!

CEDu581 Computer Architecture: Week 2

Watching the second half of the Revenge of the Nerds video was fascinating to me as I followed along with this historic time line involving IBM, Microsoft, Seattle Computers, Intel, and Compaq. Some of the seemingly minor decisions regarding copyright, company purchases, and software purchases have developed into major corporate and computing history. Microsoft buying the rights to an operating system for IBM for $50,000 (I found further reading at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Computer_Products and posted the cool business card from SCP!) from SCP is amazing. This strikes me as analogous to buying Manhattan for $28 and buying the Louisiana Territory for $15 million.

The reverse engineering done by Compaq is also historic, not only in how it was done, but in its legality. Taking on IBM was gutsy and there are many other people and companies that are doing with right now as they take on Microsoft. Going back through corporate history, I find it amazing how companies who once dominated their industry (Woolworth, Sears, K-Mart, GM, Chrysler, etc.) are either in decline, bought out, or bankrupt. Who will it be next?

I recall my older cousin, Johnny, getting a job with IBM in Rochester, Minnesota, immediately upon his college graduation from UW-LaCrosse in 1975. Everyone in my family was in awe of him and his computing acumen. Even though I had no interest in computer hardware or software at the time, I was impressed with the immediate success he came upon by virtue of his hard work in earning his college degree. Johnny was the first one in my family to earn a bachelors degree and he certainly was a role model for me as I became the second to earn a degree in 1983.

I now have a better understanding of how Microsoft grew to dominate the operating system industry. Because Gates had the rights to sell software to all PC manufacturers in the mid-1980s, his company grew unbelievably fast. Our society's fascination with his management style, software prowess, and wealth is more understandable to me after watching these videos. I am now very curious about LINUX and open-source software and how they affect Microsoft's future growth.

CEDu581 Computer Architecture: Week 1

I found it fascinating to realize that, at age 47, I actually have quite a personal history with computers. As a business education teacher, I tend to always look to where we are going with computers in the future. It was fun and fascinating to look back on my background with computers, going back to Marquette U in the early 1980's to my family and retail use of computers over the years to my current use of computers as an educator. The Computer History Forum that we all participated in was interesting in that many of us share similar experiences, whether that be frustration with the early days of programing to the middle year issues of computer speed and capability to our modern-day issues of more power and applications.

I particularly enjoyed the "Triumph of the Nerds" videos as they really brought home how far we have come with personal computer hardware and software. Again, as a business teacher who works with students on stocks and investing, I now look at companies such as Apple, Intel, and Microsoft through different lenses. It is truly amazing how those companies are so young and yet have come to so far in terms of market penetration and market capitalization. As of the end of today, Apple has a market cap of $109.68 billion and Microsoft is at $178.53 billion. Not bad for companies started by "Nerds" in garages in the 1970s! I certainly intend on sharing some of this information with my future Computer Applications and Financial Life Skills students.

Finally, I found the list of companies from the Computer History Museum to be much broader than I expected. I guess I never thought of Timex and Seiko to be in that category, but it makes perfect sense that they are. Secondly, as a student of retailing, I was interested to learn that Commodore went bankrupt in 1994 and Atari was done by 1996. Sharp was the creator of Ever-Sharp pencils, the first all-transistor desktop calculator, and made microwaves that I have sold and used. At the family hardware store, we sold AT & T phones, GE light bulbs and toaster ovens, Hitachi breadmakers, Mitsubishi portable generators, Philips, Sylvania, and Westinghouse light bulbs, Rockwell drills, and utilized a Siemens point-of-sale system for 7 years. Wow! What diversification for these corporations.

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.