Final MMP & Reflection

Hi Everyone!!!
  I hope you enjoy my finalized MMP project on using Google Products in the Classroom. Additionally I hope you get the chance to pass this resource onto educators in your school district as well as any colleagues that may be struggling with getting started utilizing these products into his/her classroom. Below I attached my final screencast highlighting the finalized website and its functionalities as well as an audio clip where I discuss my experience and reflect on creating/developing this website. I hope you enjoy listening to both!

Google in the Classroom Website 

Reflection Audio

Final MMP Screencast

Technology Tool Kit

           

      Since the certificate I am working towards is focused in Elementary Education with Middle School Mathematics Content Specialization I wanted to focus my technology tool kit towards a compilation of the technology tools I learned about pertaining to math specifically. Furthermore, I find that this subject in particular lacks the most technology use compared to the others. In the future I tend to add to my technology tool kit by adding the technology tools for other content areas. For this particular assignment I didn’t want to bombard everyone with a lot of technology tools but just wanted them to get an understanding with how this could be beneficial. 

I decided to create my technology tool kit using a social bookmarking site, Symbaloo, after finding out that CITED was no longer available. I discovered this website within my graduate courses that I was taking last spring semester. I think this website is really unique because you are able to generate a web mix that displays all the websites you pin to it and are able to share it with either your students, parents, or even colleagues. Additionally, people within the Symbaloo community are able to research your web mix and follow it (this could be a great feature for having your colleagues connected to your site). 

If this web mix were to be sent to an administrator the one thing I think I would consider changing would be making a section on the site for Middle School Mathematics because I would want them to see that this particular tool highlights all the content areas that I am certified in. However, I find that the layout of the tool kit is very versatile for any elementary grade teacher and depending upon the administrator that were to be viewing it would depend upon any further changes that would be made. Since I just finished up with the tool kit tonight tomorrow I plan to send the link for the tool kit to both of my cooperating teachers to find out there input on the tool kit since they both are teachers of mathematics. I would make sure that I inform them that I will be adding to each of the other subjects to improve the versatility this tool kit provides to all content areas. I would request their feedback and hope that they would provide me with any further websites/technology tools that could be added to the mathematics section of my technology tool kit. I hope you all enjoyed viewing my technology tool kit and gained insight towards another technology tool that you may be able to add to your own technology tool kit and utilize within the field. Below I added additional details for each tool that I included within my tool kit be sure to take a look to find out why it would be beneficial to utilize them in the Mathematics classroom.

My Technology Tool Kit: http://edu.symbaloo.com/home/mix/13ePBfgYGM

Additional Details: 

• Galileo.org- This website has plenty of research as well as articles/resources to learn about inquire-based education. This website is an awesome place to go to start out teaching with inquiry. There are a variety of full set classroom lessons and examples. They have plans for specific high school, middle school, and primary school math investigations. There also is the ability to download the Focus on Inquiry eBook, to be able to read more about what inquiry means, learn how to construct essential questions, and much more.

• Illuminations- This website has an enormous library of virtual manipulatives that would be great for any teacher trying to make that smartboard math lesson a visual experience. You can allow your students to drag around the virtual algebra tiles, discover triangle congruence theorems, and shade equivalent fractions. NCTM offers a set of math resources on the Illuminations site. This is perfect for classrooms with computers or iPad’s. There are also some fantastic lessons that are sorted by grade level ranging from lower grades all the way up to high school. Additionally, this website provides fun brain teasers that would be great for a warm-up activity.
• Geogebra- With this website student’s can sketch a figure into the software (parallel lines intersected by a transversal, centers of triangles, tangent lines, etc.).  GeoGebra allows students to easily display angle measures, drag points around, and notice properties by observing what measures change and what measures stay the same. This website makes exploration easy in Geometry class for any student!  There are endless possibilities with this, especially if you are trying to incorporate a little discovery-based learning. You are able to download the software free for your classroom or access the teacher page that provides a variety of worksheets, samples, and ideas for lessons that use GeoGebra, a great resource for teachers.
• Desmos- Desmos is the new way to do all your graphing and plotting.  It's ideal for Algebra investigations.  Use this site to allow students to transform functions and create fun or artistic graphs. This website allows users to try out the graphing calculator or have the opportunity to browse the teaching resources and activities that are available for use. 
• Inquiry Maths- This website provides question prompts to teachers that are perfect ways to get students thinking critically about a variety of math concepts. There are a variety of categories for the question prompts such as: Number Prompts, Algebra Prompts, Geometry Prompts, and Statistics Prompts. This website also provides a resource for teachers to take a look at their assessment framework as well as learn about ways to write their own prompts.
• Think Central- This website is a free resource that offers K-12 teachers resources to accompany their math textbook. This resource ranges in topics from basic math concepts to middle-grade geometry and algebra. This resource is very thorough and provides teachers with a large catalog of resources for them to use in the classroom. The different options offered within each section closely match specific skill and strategies introduced in the classroom. Overall, these manipulatives are perfect for mini-lessons!
• Math Learning Center- The Math Learning Center offers web and app-based manipulatives with some of the best resources for building number sense. The Math Learning Center provides easy to use number-sense building manipulatives – abaci, ten frames, hundreds charts, etc.  This resource is beneficial for teachers of any grade level. 

Update #2

Hi Everyone!!!!
       I am attaching the links to my screencasts that walk you through my update for my Multimedia Montage Project. In the first screencast I talk about my progress so far with my website as well as discuss the scheduling and difficulties I endured with creating/uploading the screencasts onto my website. This seemed to be the biggest difficulty I had with developing the website. The following screencast shows you the youtube message I received throughout my time of trying to upload my tutorials to YouTube. Additionally in this screencast I walk you through my website so you are able to see the changes I have made due to the modification I had to make with not being able to input my own tutorial videos. As in my first update, the link to be able to view my website is as follows: https://paigesenatore6309.wixsite.com/googleeducationpd. Feel free to explore the website as a user, I hope you enjoy and I am looking forward to hearing your feedback!

Screencast #1
Screencast #2
Google Education PD Website

Identifying oneself through Multimedia

When reading the discussion post for this week I was interested to read more about this topic. When growing up, going to school involved paper, pencil, and overhead projectors. However, nowadays there is such an advantage with the advancements that have been made with technology but also the incorporation of it in the classroom. When students are given the option to select a modality they would like to express their learning through, I find that it not only allows them to implement a different method of expressing his/her learning, but it also provides the educator with an insight into that student’s identity and how media has had an influence in their lives.

In the article Film as Identity Exploration: A Multimodal Analysis of Youth-Produced Films (Halverson, 2010) this provided me with plenty of insight as to why it would be important for me, as well as any educator, to implement multimedia into their classrooms. It is imperative for a student to be given a way to express him/herself to the world in order to understand who he/she is as a person. Most times in school settings students are routinely stuck with the continuous forms of learning and unable to go beyond that. Halverson (2010) states that the “primary mechanism we have for constructing identity is through the stories we tell […] we construct narratives as a way to understand ourselves and our experiences in the world” (p. 2354-2355). Giving the students the ability to explain a story, whether it be to summarize something they read or have a multimedia production about an event in his/her life, have an equal influence on that particular student’s life. From my personal experiences in graduate school when I was given the opportunity to complete multimedia projects these were the ones I enjoyed the most. I was able to use various mediums and I was able to create it in a way

that expressed who I was and how I learned best. Every individual/student is different between their personalities, but also in the way he/she learns, therefore as a teacher, it is important not to stick to a “one size fits all” philosophy in your classroom. It has been proven that through “the process of telling, adapting, and performing narratives of personal experience that adolescents engage in positive identity development” (p.2356). Overall, it is imperative as educators to make sure that we are giving our students plenty of opportunities to utilize the technology in the classroom and develop different multimedia literacies in order to have them overcome the participation gap as well as to have a way of expressing his/her own identity.

References

• Halverson, E. R. (2010). Film as identity exploration: A multimodal analysis of youth-produced films. Teachers College Record, 112(9), 2352-2378.

Copyright

After critiquing the two copyright resources I visited for this blog post this week I have come to the conclusion that copyright can be a very blurred concept. I believe this because I don’t think everyone is properly educated on what is/isn’t against copyright laws. Within my time here at Rutgers I have been educated heavily on plagiarizing whether it be for someone else’s work or properly citing text from an author. However, I have not heard once about copyright until this blog post. In my first year of the graduate school I was assigned various projects where I had to create multimedia projects. For one of my projects the document was removed from YouTube because it stated that it dishonored one of the copyright laws. I was astonished when this happened because I was not aware of what I did wrong and thought that because I cited the audio that I used in my project it was okay. Since copyright laws are not regularly addressed I find that people tend to think of them in less of a mandated order. It is important when being an educator to address these concerns to your students so they are well advanced and clearly understand what is, and what is not, against copyright laws. In today’s educational world technology has become such an essential piece in children’s education that it is imperative for them to be educated on these topics. When students and educators are educated on these different laws it will not only make their workload easier but also may cause less frustration later on. The first resource I viewed was, "YouTube Copyright Basics" by YouTube Help, the following excerpt is my critique on this resource.

With this resource I really enjoyed how the concepts of copyright and everything there is to learn about the topic were explained simply for viewers to be able to understand at all age levels. However, I did not like the characters that were used and the way they communicated amongst one another. I think that the way the actors/delivers of information presented the material made it seem like the video was meant for a much younger age level. However, the way the information was presented and thoroughly explained made me like watching this video and be able to effectively learn about the different concepts regarding copyright. A nice feature of this video was the humor that was implemented to address different conflicts that are involved when copyrighting. I think this was helpful for keeping the interest of all the viewers of the video to be able to know the different precautions when using other user’s videos on YouTube. Overall I found this video to be very informative on copyright and all the issues users and producers run into while utilizing videos from across the YouTube platform.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp1Jn4Q0j6E&list=PLvzOwE5lWqhTbOCIFp_OxsN6nC-l20kMT&index=3

The next resource I viewed was, "The Educator's Guide to Copyright and Fair Use" by Education World, the following excerpt is my critique on this resource.

I really enjoyed viewing this text-based resource because it implements a way to be able to educate your students and yourself of the important concepts of copyright. Although copyright made be a challenging concept to understand when it is delivered through a unit it can be helpful for not only students but also teachers as well. I like that it incorporates different instances that might have occurred and then educates the viewer on these topics. One of the topics states, “Have you ever…” this is a very quick and useful way to notice if you have performed any of these acts before and then be able to learn whether or not this may violate the copyright laws. This website does a great job of walking through all the common mistakes and then helping you to understand whether or not this is a flaw and going over the basics for copyright. However, something that I did not like about this informational resource was how text-heavy it is and the lack of multimedia aids for further explanations. I think for different users the use of multimedia within this resource could be very essential. Overall, I found this resource to be a very good place to go and navigate various information regarding copyright, however, I think it is targeted towards a higher age level since it contains a lot of text. 

http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/curr280.shtml

References

Starr, L., & Education World. (2010, March 25). The Educator's Guide to Copyright and Fair Use. Retrieved March 17, 2017, from http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/curr280.shtml

YouTubeHelp. (2013, July 01). Retrieved March 17, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp1Jn4Q0j6E&list=PLvzOwE5lWqhTbOCIFp_OxsN6nC-l20kMT&index=3