5. Professional Development Excel 2007 Training I taught an introductory workshop on Excel to the UB office staff, of various backgrounds and abilities. I taught Excel 2007, the latest version. I put our notes on a wiki with web links to other tutorials. After the workshop, I updated the page to include “homework” assignments so that staff could practice what they had learned.
6. Technology Assessment The Technology Assessment we conducted early, prior to the start of the summer program concluded that a central hub (website) of some sort was needed to help facilitate communication between students and teachers, to offer additional course resources, to archive the summer program (student work and pictures) and to create a spot that students and faculty were familiar with so that when the regular school year began, everyone knew where UB information could be found. So, I developed a wiki: http://upwardbound-esu.wikispaces.com
7. Technology Club – Exploration of Web 2.0 Tools Wordle www.wordle.net Picnik www.picnik.com BitStrips www.bitstrips.com Glogster www.glogster.com SumoPaint www.sumopaint.com Voki www.voki.com Yaplet www.yaplet.com
8. Technology Club – Exploration of Web 2.0 Tools http://upwardbound-esu.wikispaces.com/Agenda+-+July+7
11. Student & Teacher Adoption -Creative Writing An early adopter of the wiki were the creative writing teachers. They encouraged their students to upload their work and they within a couple of days added to their page. Karen even created a slide show of pictures of the class using an online slideshow creator (with very little instruction from me.)
13. Student Adoption – New York City & Discussion In order to try to get all UB students actively involved with the wiki, we created the “Question of the Day” and had students answer it by stopping by computer during 4pm meeting and entering their response. Those responses were compiled into a scrolling text image and added to the NYC page. After the NYC trip, student reporters wrote an article about the trip.
15. Teacher Adoption – Chemistry Laurie early on emailed me copies of PowerPoints she was using in class. I uploaded them to SlideShare & posted them to the wiki for reference.
16. Teacher Adoption – Math Both math teacher’s supplied me with their course syllabi and I worked to find useful links that matched their content. For both teacher’s, I tried to choose online resources that would provide students with either review (through use of online game or quiz) or reference (SAT information or Geometry online videos/tutorials.)
Technology Club met one hour per week and I had 10 students sign up to be a part of the club. We ended up meeting only four times during the summer due to scheduling conflicts and often the club was late getting to Minsi Hall after Study Hall. Because of the time constraints, we did not get to make a video, podcast or vodcast as I had hoped. But we did explore Web 2.0 tools that I think are useful for education. Because the kids had been in class all day, I did not make them do a regular, educational assignment for me. Their work, if they chose to share it, would be an object that they could embed in the wiki to share with their friends and make the wiki more visually appealing. This was another way that I encouraged students to be creative and add content to the wiki. I was disappointed that no Voki’s were shared (I think the students just had fun with those and were being silly) and I think SumoPaint was difficult for the students to create something “post-worthy.” (very steep learning curve, like PhotoShop). Bri shared a lot of items, including her glog and she also surfed the internet for other embeddable items. Although I did not teach it, she used Scrib to save and post her Creative Writing samples. The Yaplet chat tool proved to be very well received. Not only is it viewable on our site, but it is advertisement free (many of the other chat rooms are not!) As a possible extension, I would like to encourage students, such as the Creative Writing class to “decorate” their pages with these Web 2.0 elements or to create an element that is based on one of their pieces of work. At first, Technology Club was designed to create and maintain this website. However, due to the scheduling conflicts and the recognition that we could not get a lot done in one hour per week, we changed the focus to just fun stuff. Technology Club students were encouraged during club to update and add pictures to their e-profiles (COE). Technology Club students were taught from first day how to add content to a page in the wiki and were taught about what makes a wiki a wiki, etc.
Wordle- is an online word cloud creator that we used the first night of technology club to “get to know” each other and to create some kind of “embeddable” content. I went home and copied all of the codes to embed the wordles and then I uploaded them myself the first time. Beware: Wordle has inappropriate content that will be seen (cannot get an educators account!) Picnik – online photo editor but you can only upload 5 photos at a time. I tried to have students access my account only to realize that if they uploaded, it wiped out what was already there…but, the photo editing tools are well worth it, especially if you are working on your own computer and in the middle of a project. (standard “fix-ups” plus stickers and frames, etc.) BitStrips – online comic strip creator. Glogster – is an online, interactive poster maker. You can upload videos and music to the poster and it has a very creative interface. I signed up for an educators account which gave me several usernames/passwords for students and that way I could eliminate the “unwanted content.” Voki – is an online avatar maker in which you can choose the character, clothes and accessories. You can also type in words to make the avatar talk. SumoPaint – is an online PhotoShop tool that has some really neat drawing capabilities (see the shape tools and trails) but it will also enhance pictures like Photoshop – works with layers. Very steep learning curve! I had hoped to have time to really talk about layers and some of the paint tools so we could create web banners for each of the pages in the wiki (to make them more visually appealing and allow students to be creative) but the instruction time was not there. VoiceThread – I uploaded pics to Voicethread (another photoslide show creator, but with “comments”), hoping we could create the Student Voices project, but the adding audio is a pro feature. However, if we would have had time in Tech Club, I would have had students type in comments for the pictures that I uploaded.
I met with the entire Upward Bound group of students and RA’s three times during the summer to promote the wiki. On the second night of the summer, I introduced the wiki and talked about what a wiki was and what we were hoping to accomplish. I also met with the RA’s to encourage their participation by adding pictures to their page as ell as taking pictures of student activities and posting them and being in charge of the “Question of the Week.” (note: RA’s really did not jump on board to help – there was some confusion on how to add content to pages – a self-declared “webmaster” who knew HTML did not like the interface and found it difficult to use…instead of taking my recommendations about how to work with wiki, he made it more complicated by worrying about the HTML and I think that discouraged the other RA’s about getting involved. However, RA’s did supply some pictures and activity to me that uploaded for them. Eventually Mike did add table with RA info and some pictures. After three weeks, I introduced the new and improved wiki and showed the new layout and design. We also emphasized the fully editable features of the wiki, encouraging budding student reporters to add to the New York City page, etc. During Week 5, my goal was to remind students of the wiki and to give the website address again. This time, I gave the students a handout that listed some pages that had very little content (with the hope some students might jump to add content –I explained what I meant by addding “tidbits” to the pages – didn’t have to be long paragraphs) and I also encouraged the students to take the online survey during the weekend. I wanted to introduce the Student Voices Project, but I decided not because it was so difficult to just get the kids on the website, let alone a part of it…plus, time was at a premium. However, only 3 students went on over the weekend. It is important to note that the wiki was not “needed” during the summer program. The kids were together 24/7, Sunday-Friday and had very little time to be online. They were also “dewired” this summer and could not have cell phones. So, the only time they would have gotten online may have been on the weekend. On the last day of the summer program, I met with about half of the students to have them physically go to the wiki and take the survey and respond to the question of the day. We also made sure each student registered for Wikispaces and joined this wiki. Due to scheduling, I was not able to get all students in for this training, but we see this training as an important step in making sure the students know about this resource and see its potential benefit for them, especially when the regular, academic program starts in September.
I met with teachers both at the Faculty Potluck and at the weekly Wednesday staff meetings to encourage them to add content that may be useful for their students. A Teacher Content Form was sent out to all of the teachers prior to the start of the summer program. This form gave teacher’s ideas of what they could include on their page as well as links to see my wiki pages for ideas. The Foundations/Seminar teacher responded right away by emailing the answers to the Teacher Content Form which included links to helpful content, an inspiration quote and their attached course syllabi. Both math teachers and the Creative Writing teacher sent their course syllabi and the Chemistry teacher asked me at the staff meeting if she could send me smaller PowerPoints. Other teachers were interested and said they were going to send stuff, but never did. There was some trouble at the start with teachers joining the wiki and trying to add content. In trying to keep the wiki more secure, I locked out some of the faculty (Dr. Chandler) and I am not sure that he ever went back on after that. Computer Use Survey Uriel talked this up weekly with the teachers, encouraging them to get actively involved. The Creative Writing teacher asked at one staff meeting if folders could be made for each student, so I created clipart images of folders for each student which linked to a blank page for each student in her class. She also emailed me with question about uploading pictures as a slideshow and I emailed her the directions for Slideroll, but she ended up figuring it out herself, uploading 58 pictures to www.slide.com and then embedding the slide show into the wiki.
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