Self Introduction

Click here to view my self introduction in google documents.

This was the first time I have used Voki. It is a neat program that can be dangerous...I spent so much time "playing" around and creating people. It is like a video game and could be very addicting. I see this as a great tool for the students of today. The way that kids are ALWAYS texting, and using technology for communication, they would surely enjoy creating an animated self and having the animation do the talking. :)
This could be a fun and new way to compare and contrast characters from books or create a book report told by a character from the story. I could go on and on about possibilities for use of Voki in the classroom, but I will allow you to see what you think and come up with.

After much time spent playing around, here is the character for myself I came up with. This was my first exploration with Voki, so I am not to sure if there are additional ways to alter the features aside from the few options on the main screen. I did my best at creating me, and I promise I did not enhance any features to make me more beautiful. (haha, another plus to the program...look how you want)

This program clearly allows students to use their creativity through technology as indicated necessary in the 2000 NETS. It also allows students to use technology as a means of collaboration and communication as described in standard five. It is quit possible that students could have so much fun they could get side tracked and loose sight of the goal. This is where teacher management would be crucial for student success. The program itself is fairly self explanatory and allows for creativity.

Excel

Today we learned how to do some new things in Excel. I use Excel fairly often when I want to compare my students scores against one another or if I want to group them by similarities in their answer choices. By downloading the analysis toolpac it was simple to run the analysis and rearrange the data. The add in allows for customization of analysis breakdown and creates a new spreadsheet within the existing file.
Below is my scatter plot for the data that shows how each state performed in 4th grade reading for 2011. You will notice that 7 states scores above my state, Virginia. My state, Virginia, is doing quit well considering they are performing above the average by 1 standard deviation, or 6 points. With only 7 states scoring higher that puts Virginia in the top third of the country.

Self Grading Form

Today I watched the YouTube video on self grading forms and it was so easy to understand and create on my own. I wrote down the formulas, because that would be the thing I may forget when creating these in the future. Here is the link to the self grading form "how to" video. I have also created a quick link in my Favorite Links section on this page.

For my self grading form I created a quick quiz for my class about sentence writing. It contains three multiple choice questions. Take my quiz and see how you measure up!


This is the link for my spreadsheet that shows the grades for each person who has taken the quiz. The first row contains the correct answers or the "key" for the test. Then I used the formulas from the video to create the grading portion of the test. The final grade is in the column furthest to the right.

Google Forms

I created a survey to see what some of my students know about the winter holidays. Here is the survey I created and my link for the spreadsheet with my data.

Google Forms are incredibly easy to create. I like that you can make questions required by simply clicking the box. The quiz/survey can not be submitted until all required questions are complete. I also like that the form puts all the answers into a spreadsheet for you. This makes things easier for the teacher because he/she can look at one question at a time and compare all the classes answers to look for similarities and differences. I can absolutely see myself using this program in the classroom if I had older students.

Prezi

So here is my first attempt at a real Prezi presentation with numerous slides. I took my powerpoint presentation and inserted the slides and then played with them to enhance the presentation. I also added a YouTube video that fits nicely with the content. This is my Amazing Animals Prezi presentation. Enjoy!
I like using powerpoint for a quick and simple presentation of slides. Prezi was nice to take my original presentation and tweak it a bit to make it more fun and exciting for the viewer. I like how you can create a path between slides by dragging the path route from slide to slide as you decide on the path. This is user friendly when wanting to focus back out on to the big picture between topics. I can see where Prezi allows for some great creativity.

Drop Box

We recently created a presentation and needed to share it with the class. I had no idea about Drop Box, until it was presented to me in this class. It is very simple to use once downloaded. I can't believe that I was able to literally drag and drop my file into the box icon and it would then be saved online and create a URL. The URL makes it very user friendly to share with others, without emailing yet another attachment. I can see how this program would be useful for large files or presentations that can be accessed from any computer problem free.