JanelleSmoot

=Janelle Smoot = =EDET 650, Fall 2011 =

You can view my internship information here, or at my wiki. 1. Proposal 2. Contract 3. Reflections: 4. Annotated Bibliography 5. Mid-Term Report 6. Final Reflection 7. Time Sheets: 8. Staff Development Website 9. Video Series: 10. Survey
 * September 13th
 * September 27th
 * October 25th
 * November 8th
 * November 22nd
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Time Sheet One (due Sept 13th)
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Time Sheet Two (due Sept 27th)
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Time Sheet Three (due Oct. 11th)
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Time Sheet Four (due Oct. 25th)
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Time Sheet Five (due Nov. 8th)
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Time Sheet Six (due Nov. 22nd)
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Time Sheet Seven (Due with Final reflections)
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">eChalk Training
 * Assessment Programs

=<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Reflections: =

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">__September 13th__
<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">I am very excited about the potential of my internship project and it’s implications for the teachers at LEMS. I have not shared my plans with much of the faculty, but received positive feedback. For the internship, I will be creating four video series on technology that can be used as professional development for the teachers at LEMS. The first video series, eChalk, was requested by LEMS’s media specialist to meet the specific needs of the teachers at my school.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">So far I really like the way I laid out the schedule for the video series progression. During the second or third video series on my schedule I have an extra week built in as a ‘buffer’ incase I get behind or need extra time to accommodate unforeseen issues. Now that I started the actual project, I wish I would have built that extra week at the beginning. I am finding that it is take a big longer to get the project started than I anticipated. I typically do all of my grad school classwork when I get home from my full time job. I do not feel like I should be spending my time at work on my grad school stuff because I have other responsibilities to take care of while I am at work. Since the beginning of the project has more planning and decisions to make, it is taking me longer to complete than expected. While I am at school, I do not think about grad school. When I get home, I think “I meant to talk with Ann about that today!” Then I kept putting off asking my questions for the internship because of meetings, paperwork, etc… that relates to my actual job.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Thankfully, I feel as though I am still on track but have not had much of a start on creating the videos. These were the things that I had trouble finding time to talk with the media specialist about while I was at school: 1) creation of LeRoy Leopard (fake student) for me to manipulate during the videos, 2) which video hosting site do we want to use 3) does the media specialist want to give me access to the school’s video hosting account or should I create my own account 4) have the media specialist give me editing access to the faculty’s eChalk page so I can upload and manage the videos. The media specialist has been way more than helpful-I am very thankful for her; I just need to spend more time at Lugoff-Elgin Middle School working on my internship instead of waiting until I get home. As strange as it may sound, that is a very hard thing for me to do! <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">By September 6th I had the goal of creating a list of videos that will be created for the video series. Each video will be about 2 to 3 minutes, and will never exceed five minutes. The series will include the following items: <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">The prep time involved in creating this list was more involved than I thought it would be. I spent about two hours looking at the resources provided by the eChalk company. This had a two fold purpose: 1) make sure I correctly understood how eChalk works 2) making sure that I do not duplicate a video already created by the eChalk company. The website has MANY resources in a variety of formats for me to sort through and decide what I could use and what not to use: powerpoints, handouts, podcasts, webcasts, and activities. I created the list of videos by selecting topics that are not already videos. The homework dropbox is the only topic that is close to being a video, however, I will be taking a completely different approach than the one that was provided. The provided webcast created by eChalk were screenshots and arrows. My video will be created to show a ‘live’ action tutorial rather than still images. When I start managing the resources online, I will also include links to resources already created by eChalk..
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">How to change student passwords
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">How to create a new section by using your Course ID and Section ID numbers.
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">How to use homework dropbox (two videos- one for teachers, the other for students)
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">How to embed items into eChalk page (or blog page)
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">How to use the discussion board.
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">How to add members to a class.
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">How to create a blog (only an overview)
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">How to change your profile information.
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">How to use the eChalk bookmark feature

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">My September 13th ‘milestone’ was to check in with mentor on progress and begin uploading resources to eChalk. Also, I was to start managing the staff development resources for the current video series. I have not actually started uploading and organizing the materials online yet; however, after checking in with my mentor today, I do feel confident that the progress made will allow me to have the series completed and managed by my September 20th timeline.

__<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">//September 27th// __
media type="custom" key="10587436" align="right" <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Since my last reflection, things have been pretty smooth sailing. All videos were uploaded to the eChalk staff page for all teachers to view. We have not had a faculty meeting since the completion video series one, but it will be presented shortly! A list of all the video are embedded to the right. Feel free to view as you see fit! Unfortunately, I was not able to complete the video on dropbox as I would have liked too. The media specialist and I ran into trouble creating fake student accounts, therefore didn't feel as though I should use the account information of an actual student. We discussed using an account of a student whose parent works at our school, therefore all the teachers would already know that student and the parent.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">The media specialist and I discussed displaying the video series through eChalk for teachers to access. I do like this method because of the easy access and also security of only allowing the desired teachers to be able to access the videos. However, I really enjoy the creation of websites, so I think I am going to also gather these video resources in additional website to help the 'visual' appearance. eChalk offers very few options on how to display resources on our faculty and staff eChalk page. Because of this, accessing the videos can be 'wordy' since the user has to scroll through a lot of text. This is how my media specialist wanted it to be done, so I will definitely leave it as is. Click here to view the eChalk staff page and click hereto view how videos are listed. However, I will start up a new side project in addition to uploading the videos to the eChalk page. Click here to view the preliminary picture of how I tried to make the eChalk training video series page more visually appealing. While this is better, it is not good enough so I will remove the last page and leave the list of videos as discussed with my media specialist until I complete an alternate webpage or wiki for teachers to access my content.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Now that I have gone through the process of creating a video series once, I feel that my future video series will work out much better. I am very happy with the results of my of first video series, but I am looking forward to my planned improvements! Also, I feel that the future series will flow much better now that I have set the ground work with all the technical aspects and details that had to be worked out with people at my school. From here on out, I can do most of my work from home, which is where I feel most comfortable working on my internship work!

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Another 'milestone' for me to have completed was to start identifying the videos for the second series. I spent some time talking with my principal, Karen Bullard. She would like me to create videos and handouts to teach teachers how to run special reports on PowerTeacher, TestView, and NWEA(MAP Testing). <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">The following videos/handouts will be made- <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">PowerTeacher <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">TestView <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">NWEA
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">Health Concerns
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Setup GradeBook (regular and high school course)
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Adding Major and Minor Assignments
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Adding Report Card Comment
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Adding Comment to a score
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Reports (attendance audit, progress report, multi-section report, grade verification, roster, and printing for only one student)
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Reports (for both current and past students):
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Obtain MAP Scores
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Obtain PASS Scores
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Obtain history of MAP Scores and PASS scores (three year history to track progress)
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Export Report to Excel
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Look up MAP score report
 * Obtain MAP Score projected goal growth from Fall to Spring
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Printable Goal Sheets for students
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Project PASS Score from MAP Data
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">MAP score analysis by grouping

=<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Mid-Term Report = media type="custom" key="10824995" Video Series One: media type="custom" key="10587436" align="left"Video Series Two: media type="custom" key="10824817"

//<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">__October 25th__ //
<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">The past two weeks have been interesting. I ended the mid-term on an emotional high. I was extremely excited about where my project was heading at mid-term, but things have taken a sharp turn! Since mid-term, a technology survey/assessment was created and sent out to staff at my school via email. Of about 30 teachers at my school, only four completed the survey. I was deeply saddened by the lack of participation in this survey. Not many of the teachers at my school seem to want extra resources, so why should I make them? It seems pointless and a waste of time. Teachers are overwhelmed and busy, so I don't take it personally. I just wish there was some way to help alleviate their stress and give them more time to work on lesson plans and professional development. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">For those that did complete the survey, I found some of their answers to be what I expected, but others surprising. For example, I expected teachers to rate their technology proficiencies as they did. Teachers have mastered things such as email, interactive white board, online grade book, and eChalk. They then stated that they would like professional development on things like developing ePortfolios, multimedia presentations, and web 2.0 tools. The answers to those questions were expected, but I am glad I received confirmation. The question asking teachers how they would like to receive their professional development surprised me. For example, teachers seem to prefer small groups for professional development rather than online professional development. This puts me in a strange place, do I continue with what I am doing with online training or do I develop some other plan? I am at a loss of what to do. I feel like I don't have any other option than to continue with my online professional development series. The staff would not be fond of extra meetings after school nor taking up their planning, which isn't an option anyway because I'm not available during any teacher's planning period except for 8th grade teachers. For now, the plan continues as started until I can find a better plan!

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Using the technology survey as a guide, I plan on creating my professional development video series on GoAnimate. Since GoAnimate has a tutorial for first time users, I will create the videos to help teachers incorporate GoAnimate into their classroom, giving them specific ways to incorporate it with their standards. Hopefully this will help teachers incorporate the technology into their classroom lesson plans better!

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">I have also started creating a staff wikispace to gather all of the resources that have been created so far. I love that other teachers will be able to add to this as well. One teacher has already requested to join the staff wikispace and add some of her stuff! That made me excited again about my project! (see link at top of the page!)

//<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">__November 8th__ //
<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Is it really November already? It is hard to believe that this much of the internship has been completed!

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">So for progress, I am a little behind where I should be, but nothing that I can not make up in short amount of time. I am currently suppose to be finished with my third video series. I have not completed the series yet since I had a little bit of a late start. The lack of participation sent me reeling on what to do and if I made the right choice! I have since started to feel better about my project, but only since I am enjoying what I am doing!

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Addition to my project: Zamzar. I have created a Zamar video upon request of my media specialist. This is a stand alone video, but it turned out well. I feel that I am getting much better in my video creation! Not only am I more efficient at it, I'm also able to create better videos (at least in my opinion!). Once I'm finished with this third video series, I will be add them to my Staff Development Website for my school. I like the new wikispace that I am putting together. It is much better than the original plan to put it on eChalk.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">I feel like my reflection is a bit short and anti-climatic this time, but I guess that is a good thing.

__<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">//November 22nd// __
<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Since last reflection paper, a lot has been completed! When I look at my staff wikispace, it doesn’t look like much has been completed. Many, many hours have been spent on these videos and putting it together on a staff wikispace. Since the last reflection, I’ve uploaded the Zamzar video and put it together on the wikispace, along with an animation/banner and description. I completed the GoAnimate videos, uploaded, and designed the wikispace for GoAnimate instruction. By the way, I’m very happy with the way my GoAnimate page turned out. It took a while and lots of edits to get it just right, but I’m happy with it! It’s strange how wikispace can be picky sometimes about formatting. I still don’t understand why wikispace picks and chooses when formatting will work and not work!

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">I also created about 10 animations (using flash vortex) for my wikispace. The creation of these animations does not take a signification amount of time, but organizing, pulling it all together, and planning does! These animations go on the top of every wikipage to introduce the page and serve as the header.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">I’ve also started thinking about my last video series. Since I got a little behind on my last video series, I’m a little behind where I should be for this video series, however, I am fully happy with what I’ve created so far and will be able to complete this within the next week. I plan on spending a lot of time over the break on these! The next video series is going to be on Prezi and how it can be used in the classroom. I plan on completing this in a similar fashion that GoAnimate was completed and displayed on the wikispace.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">I also spent a good bit of time working on adding web 2.0 tools to the staff wikispace. Similarly to the Zamzar video, this is something extra that my supervisor and I decided to add to my internship. I think this is a fantastic idea. Currently, the librarian has several resources/webpages with resources for teachers to access web 2.0 tools from. We decided that it would be nice to add them all to the same staff wikispace. So, I am in the process of combining everything into my wikispace. I think since they are all in the same place, staff members will be more likely to use and access these resources. I still have A LOT of work to do on this aspect of the wikispace, but it is manageable. I don’t think this part will ever be completely finished because the media specialist and I will always be adding more and more web 2.0 resources to the website! So far, I’ve created pages for web 2.0 categories (such as video, photo, organization, etc…). I’ve also added an animation/banner to each of these pages to give them a little pizzazz! I’ve linked some resources already by taking snapshots of part of the homepage, uploading the image to my wiki, then linking the image to the correct url. My goal is to type a little about each of them, similarly to the web 2.0 tool kit created in EDET 603 class, but this will be for the purpose of letting my co-works know what each of the tools are and how they can be used in educational settings.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">I’ve also spent a little bit of time cleaning up the navigation. It’s so important for navigation to be clear and easy to use! It’s crazy how time consuming it can be to accomplish small tasks. Maybe it just seems time consuming because what I did was very repetitive when completing these tasks, such as adding animations and links. It’s tiring clicking the same buttons over and over again! This same thing goes for completing other tasks, like uploading videos and waiting for videos to finish saving from iMovie and Camtasia! I hate waiting for movies to finish saving and/or load into iMovie. I know it doesn’t take too long, but it takes a lot longer than I’d like.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">I still have several things to do (see list below), but I’m in crunch mode and ready to work it out over the holiday break! Is it sad that I look forward to working on my staff wiki instead of going shopping on Black Friday?

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Yet to do: <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">-Finish 4th video series <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">-upload and organize it on the staff wiki <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">-finish adding web 2.0 tools <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">-type description of tools <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">-create copyright wikipage

=<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Final Report =

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