Screen Toaster

ScreenToaster was a very great piece of software that has a great deal of possibilites. 

• The website for screentoaster is here . 
• The great thing about this site is that it's incredibly easy to use and doesn't require any type of download. 
• You can simply go to the site and click record. 
  
• The one thing that i found about the site was that if you're running a 64 bit OS it doesn't work. 
• My computer has that type of OS and it wouldn't work but when i tried it on our desktop computer at home that runs Windows vista 32 it worked just fine. 
• Here is the video we made using screentoaster. 
• An example of something that can be done is shown in the video.
• Another example could be using this software to make up video lesson plans so that they can be viewed by a substitute teacher. 

New Tech Standards & Requirements

The first thing about the new tech standards that I would like to address is the Digital Citizenship piece. 

• If we are truly supposed to teach students how to be responsible on a computer during their day at school then we can't possible block everything and anything that might be viewed as harmful. 
  
• We have discussed many times in class about the lack of ability for students to be able to get on the Internet at school and search for a topic without running into a thousand roadblocks view the district firewalls. For example: the high school i work at is having a constant problem with students finding out the filter password. The problem is that they can't locate the information they need in order to do the work that is required so the teacher needs to give the password to the student in order to find that information. This leads to all of the students knowing the password and then the district having to change it. 
• This is a great example of how if the teachers were truely teaching Digital Citizenship, this wouldn't be the large problem that it is being made out to be. 

With regards to the creativity piece of the technology:

• Students aren't given very much free reign at school because of the constant fear that something "bad" might happen. 
• We are currently living in a situation where the people in charge are NOT very tech savy and because they don't understand all the benefits and uses of technology they would rather it not be used at all, or at least to it's greatest potential. 
• Sharing notes and information could be done very easily in this new world of Google docs and other similar programs but most teachers view this as cheating and are not willing to let that type of thing happen. (Could also be discussed under collaboration and communication)
• The current system isn't very well set up to be creative because of the firewalls and filters. 
  
• A student cannot look up a single picture on the Internet at school because of the above mentioned filters and firewalls. 

I think the piece of technology that is truly being missed is the piece about Collaboration and communication.

• Currently in schools, students CANNOT use any type of IM's system or software that works in a similar way.
• As i discussed in an earlier post the use of web cams and software like SKYPE a teacher would be able to greatly widen the view of the students to other information that could be readily available given the right circumstances.
• Teachers could collaborate across the nation and the world involving technology like that and the benefit for the students would be the best possible information about their subjects instead of something dated out of a textbook. 
• Imagine a guest speaker coming into the classroom where you teach but he's doing it from South Africa. How amazing would his point of view be if that were the area of the world that you were focusing on in your classroom. 
  
• Student interest for subjects would be through the roof if all the possible uses for technology were used to their ultimate abilities. 

Catch Video

Here is the link to our presentation

Catch video was a simple, easy to use and straight forward. For the most part it's nice for using Youtube because most schools don't allow video's from Youtube and it's a nice tool to take those video's and put them on a computer or iPod to show the class. This way you can use the benefits of that tool in the classroom without having to worry about filters or firewalls that most school districts have around most video websites.  The site itself presented itself in a foreign language so the first thing to do is to change it to enlish but after you did that one time it stayed there for you. After that you just needed to find a video you liked and copy and pasted the link into the space provided and click go. The problem i encountered sometimes was that it would take a long time to change the video into the file type you wanted. Overall this is a great tool to get information a teacher can use in a class... to the class. 

Analyzing Student Data in a Spreadsheet

Here is the link to my Spread sheet. 

I liked working with the google docs version of Excel. It runs very much the same was as the excel except that some of the menu's are easier to locate and access. For example the sorting function is located conveniently at the top of the column and automatically expands the selection to the rest of the data so that the data stays together. I also liked how the formulas popped up as you started typing, which allowed you to choose which one you wanted conveniently. Overall this was a great introduction to using the google version of spreadsheets and has me even more convinced that this line of software is the way to go. 

The Chart shows that the students continued to improve from test 6 through test 10.  For the most part the students improved from test to test with a couple students scoring higher on an earlier test. It was also intersting to see that the students who outperformed other students in their class continued to do so throughout the tests. 

What I can conclude is that the teacher isn't spending more time with the lower level students. I don't see much increase in performance the lower the scores, which tells me that the students who need more attention aren't getting it. 

Skype Post

I have had Skype for a while now and have really enjoyed how it works. I have a couple friends who are currently living in Europe and other places across the country and when I get the chance to talk to them we usually talk through Skype. There was an evening where one of my wife's friends who lives in Montana wanted to "hang out" with us so I hooked up Skype and turned on the webcam and she turned hers on and it was just like she was sitting in the room with us. That was the first time we've done something like that and it was an amazing expirience.  I can see how that could be a great expirience in a classroom. The idea of guest speakers could be done daily instead of once a term. You could also do classroom projects with other classes anywhere in the world. I think it could make those commercials a reality instead of a fantasy. 

This week

• 19-0 with one more to go. We had two good games this week vs Lebanon and vs. Silverton.
  
• We looked sluggish in both games because our health isn't what it should be but we were able to pull both games out. 
• We play at Woodburn tomorrow to go undefeated on the season. We have the potential to do it but we need to make sure we're ready to go.  More to come.

Here is a nice little OSU Beavers Video

• Lets see how this works
  

• I'm an avid OSU fan and I like this little translation of a clip from a movie.