Technology and Communication

Spring 2017
Prof. Robert Andersen
Tammie Zentgraf

Journal
1/8/17
After reading the article of the SAMR model, I could identify ways that I have used technology
well in the Redefinition and Modification ways but I have definitely not gotten to the point of
Augmentation or Substitution. My student regularly word process their assignments instead of
write them for various reasons. I have a few that use a google app for text-to-speech as well
because forming the words on paper or by typing is very difficult for them. We also have
Kurzweil available for our students so they can have anything on their screen read to them. We
also have bookshare so our students can access audiobooks when reading is difficult. Those
are great tools but I dont feel like they are necessarily helping my students to achieve higher
levels of thinking or differentiating enough to help each student reach their potential. My goal in
this class is to learn how to use technology to reach at least the augmentation stage where the
student is directly more involved and more responsible for how the learning takes place. That
when they will get more excited and invested. Im not there now but I would like to figure out
how to head in that direction with my instruction.

I liked the Flipgrid application we used this week. I could see that being a fun way to have
students respond to a class question. I was super user friendly and was fun to see classmates
responses.

1/12/2017
I was excited to see the presentation formats as the highlighted technology this week. I am
currently stumbling through helping students use Prezi to put projects together for their
geography class. While Prezi is fairly intuitive to use without any previous learning, that short
tutorial on Prezi was extremely useful and immediately applicable to my daily life at school right
now! I learned more efficient ways to insert pictures and to bring in video links into the
presentation. I additionally learned more features in both google slides and PowerPoint. Both
applications are useful but I really like Prezi as a student application. They love the motion and
sequencing that can happen so easily in Prezi. I had a rare opportunity to wow my students
with my new Prezi skills and I have been able to share the tutorial with them so they too are
better informed. It is very cool to see my special education students helping their regular
education peers add more features to their presentations.

1/22/2017
Video has always been a frustrating medium for me to work with because I never spent any time
learning how to work with it. I still feel very much the novice but after having several
experiences with it this week, I am less timid about working with it. Learning to embed a video
directly will continue to help me in daily assistance to my students who are regularly working on
Prezis and needing to either hyperlink or embed videos. This was my first forced opportunity to
use an app to help with the instructional video project. The instructional video on the opening
page of CaptureCast was super helpful and I watched it right along with following the steps to
set it up. There was definitely a sense of accomplishment when I was able to get that uploaded
and shared through GoogleDrive tonight. Hopefully all went through to you. I want to keep
gaining confidence and familiarity with technology so that both my students and I can extend our
knowledge and grow in our comfort level of technology use that will be expected out of the next
generation of workers. I think back to my educational experience and the basic technologies
that I came out of school with (basic knowledge of Microsoft Office Products), those were cutting
edge resources back when I left high school (yeah, Im totally dating myself) but having
foundational knowledge of those technologies often gave me an advantage over other work
candidates. That is an advantage I would like to nurture in my students as well, to be
comfortable with what is considered todays current technologies.

Here is a link to the video I made using CaptureCast.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2ahTWmjy6L3ZUhsSzVWYTMwSzg

1/29/17 Videograbbing is going to be my gem of information this week. I have been in various
situations where I was relying on wifi to go to a video to show as part of a presentation and
there would be buffering issues. In fact, it was for my St. Marys classes that it has happened a
couple of times. Where we had to find a video to share and the internet service has been
questionable, especially when you are in an environment where a group of people are
simultaneously trying to stream video, bogging down the bandwidth available to that location.
This will be something I am adding to my school computer as well as to my work laptop and
personal chromebook. I am also excited about Blendspace using Tes Teach. I love that you
can integrate different mediums into one application including files or images from your desktop.
Being able to do the search right within the application keeps it super simple.

2/4/2017
This week we reviewed the tool of WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editors. This was
a new concept to me and I found it fun to use the tools in Bb to create a page on figurative
language. I understand conceptually where this could be useful but am still not confident it is
something I would use with regularity. Mainly because I would most likely use some of the other
tools that have been highlighted to make similar pages for my students.

2/12/2017
This week I put in place the foundational pieces for my eportfolio. I chose to use Wix because
of the recommendation of a few people I know who are more familiar with Wix. I found Wix to
be largely user friendly. I did have difficulty embedding documents into the webpages I created.
After reviewing several of the sample website in Bb, I saw a number of them included the use of
something called Scribd. I looked that technology up and it is a program to help you publish your
work and it works to upload many different formats into one location so it can be displayed. I
was able to get this to work and once I had done my first few documents, it worked well to
integrate information into my eportfolio this way. While I did get the basic layout and framework
in place by this due date I spent much more time beyond this date as I am currently in my 696
class working to put my final portfolio together. Below is a link to my portfolio.
Tammie's ePortfolio

2/14/2017
To help support my students and to complete at Tech 10 assignment, I created a Lucidchart
through the Google suites options, it was a fun discovery to find within something I already
currently use. Below is a snip of the Lucidchart I created for our Wednesday Wars book we are
reading in my 7th grade ELA class.

2/21/2017
Today, I worked on creating a Padlet. I have included the link to it below. I envision being able
to do a book discussion or an ongoing conversation about a topic where students can contribute
with opportunities to respond to feedback from their counterparts. This could be used for short
responses and as a gathering place for information for a group collaborating on a project. I did
run into difficulty adding images to my Padlet and that could be a drawback. I tried drag and
drop as well as saving an image in importing it but will have to work with it more to discover
what I was doing incorrectly.
Padlet - Words of encouragement

I also have created a FlipGrid that I am planning to use next week with my students. Our ELA
class is preparing to read The Wednesday War, by Gary D. Schmidt. To prepare for and give
foundational knowledge for, we are doing a mini project to learn about the Vietnam War. This
book takes place during that time in history and is an essential element in the story line. Instead
of just giving a bunch of facts to students the ELA teacher is giving each student an assignment
to select one part about the Vietnam War that they would like to learn more about and present it
to the class. Presentations in front of the class is a tough sell for some of my students who are
very shy and have anxiety issues. I put together a FlipGrid that I plan to have them use to
record their responses and will either then share with their ELA teacher or hopefully with the
class. This way they can record it with notes and no one else watching. I am excited to use this
and see how it goes.

https://flipgrid.com/1eb2a7

2/28/2017
Online Whiteboards was a idea that I am hoping to make use of in my classroom, I havent yet
attempted it but have put it on my summer to do list to learn more about it and see how it can
help my students interact with math problems on their chromebooks in a different way.

3/6/2017
This week, Kahoot was one of the technologies introduced to us in the learning module. This is
a fun way to quiz students, show video links and get feedback on how students are doing. I put
together a short quiz to help review different characters who appear in the book we are reading
in the ELA block class many of my students are in. The quiz was helpful in linking characters to
some of their roles in the book. Students were able to connect characters together with their
roles in the story.

https://play.kahoot.it/#/k/93e450c2-b9eb-4044-8eca-34e577c1fd87
1919009 is the code needed to join in and participate in the quiz.

3/13/2017
The formative assessment tools demonstrated in this weeks module are quite exciting.
GoFormative and Socrative appeal to me as a teacher. Socrative has some nice reporting
features that are beneficial to track progress but lacks the drawing feature that enables students
the ability to show work like GoFormative. Socrative has the access to share questions with
other users which is great if you have other users in your building or if you get to know a
network of other users, that really magnifies your resources and could provide an exciting list of
options to choose from. I work in a school where there is not a lot of congenial collaboration at
this point but Socrative could enable collaboration from users anywhere. I can see how I could
also use GoFormative on the spot in a classroom I am doing support in to modify work and link
my students to it immediately so they can demonstrate their learning differently but
simultaneously as their peers. I am going to dig into GoFormative and figure out how to use this
with my students when I am doing support in their various classrooms. Below is the link
supporting an identity article we are working on in the ELA classroom I provide support in. This
short assignment can help students connect with what the article is about but also start them
thinking about how they identify themselves as well as the identity of the football team in the
article this is regarding. I can see this as a powerful tool to utilize and intend to use it as such in
classrooms both where I direct instruct but also where I support students in other core classes
as well.

GoFormative Identity Assignment

3/25/2017
This weeks technology is about Learning Management Systems. Our school uses Google
Classroom and I am getting somewhat familiar with this system. I am definitely still a novice
with using this system but was able to link my Formative exercise to my Google Classroom
account for my students to access, that was a victory for me! There are some other factors that
make a LMS a worthwhile investment. To be able to access different aspects of teaching and
learning from one platform is beneficial. I like the idea of one platform but unfortunately from the
poking around that I did, they are lacking some of the formative assessment tools that weve
been exposed to in earlier weeks. I do like that I can link Formative to Google Classroom
though, I can see using that combination in the future.

April 1, 2017

Made a Quizlet that I will be using next week when I review fractions and the vocabulary that is
associated with it. Quizlet is a application that focuses on vocabulary development with
students. This program enables vocabulary lists to be generated very quickly. The groupings of
vocabulary words can then be practiced on-line as flashcards or several different matching
games enabling students to interact with the vocabulary in a variety of ways. I will use this the
rest of the year and integrate its use into my planning for next year. Below is a link to the quizlet
that was created.

https://quizlet.c om/_3bqpjo

April 8th, 2017

Took video of teaching quizlet to students. Introduced students to vocabulary related to
fractions for the below clip, then it splices to practicing with the use of Quizlet Live, a feature of
the program.

https://youtu.be/BVNfWeOaIsM

April 14th, 2017

The quizlet application has been a useful tool for my students in developing stronger
connections to academic vocabulary in math. After using the Quizlet vocabulary list for
Fractions my students scores improved from 40% to 73% accuracy in matching vocabulary
words with their definitions. They spent about 5 minutes per day for five days before being
re-assessed. I am really pleased with that increase and will continue to integrate vocabulary
into my students classroom experience.
April 20th, 2017
I am presenting my final eportfolio this evening. I am so excited to be at this part of the journey,
the end is in site. I am thankful for the great exposure that weve had to different technologies
and I look forward to integrating more of them into my instructional toolbox.!