Chapter Puzzlers returned

Chapters 1 and 2 Puzzler's were returned via campus mailboxes today. Generally Puzzler's garner 1 point per correct entry, and in this case each chapter had 24 potential points each for a total of 48 points for chapters 1 and 2 puzzlers. These grades have been posted to Blackboard.

Chapter Puzzlers Posted

For those of you who did not pick up the chapter puzzlers in class, activated the link for accessing the puzzlers here in Blackboard. They're also available at the text's website - which can be accessed using the COURSE TEXT to the left.

Week 2 Review

Understanding the learner and understanding all the facets that go into realizing the learning process are critical to finally coming around to the larger portion of this course's content - technology.

Without a foundational understanding of how someone learns, being aware of the various tools available to teachers (by way of theories, methods, and planning), the use of technology will (and probably should) fail, especially if it's given the power to supplant your teaching rather than to support it.

Realize, that I really do enjoy learning, and learning about technology. I love to play with it, figure out and investigate how it can be used in a support role to teaching. Yet, we have to get a good handle on these basics - including lesson planning.

Lesson planning holds behind it this idea of looking before you leap, and thinking through how you are going send the message - with the intent that the message you send is the message received. Lesson planning takes practice, research, collecting the supplies needed, preparing the classroom, etc., in order to help bring about or at the very least - support student success.

This week you have the same chapter puzzler's to do - and I know those will probably be very easy. Focus your best effort on coming up with a rock-solid lesson plan - one in which you can be proud. Here's my objective for this assignment:

The Learner Should Be Expected To: construct a lesson plan with a given framework (see bullets below) and identify the technology to be integrated into the lesson 100% of the time.
TLS(BET): assess the role of the technology identified 100% of the time.

Be sure to include/state the following:

• the grade level
• the subject area
• the subject area standard you'll be focusing on
• well written objectives (at least 2)
• well written procedures following a Step 1, Step2, etc. pattern
  
• materials you'll need (just a list not the actual supplies
• some form of technology integration

We'll examine your finished lessons in our next class period. Happy lesson plan writing. DO NOT find a lesson online and simply bring it in. My objective is NOT "TLSBET: print information from the Internet."

Week 1 Review

As this was the first week for the class to meet we covered lots of material. Most of that material had to do with understanding the course, the outline of the syllabus, course dates and agenda - including what's expected of each student for completion of assignments.

I enjoyed the opportunity to get to know each of you as you asked me questions and gave me some 'handles' to help me remember your names. As I said in class, knowing your students is important, and even though this is a course that's mostly - I would say, as much as 90% or more about technology, it's not good enough to displace the need to teach effectively because of the content I teach about.

I have attempted in this course to make use of technology - where it's appropriate, to learn about and use the technology, hoping to add to the integrity of the class and to your emersion into the conent.

As a primary guide, technology should be used by teachers to support excellent teaching and should never replace the teacher or superimpose itself on the content, such that the content is lost. Rather, technology should serve in a support role and should be used in conjunction with other relevant teaching methods that do not necessarily involve technology.

As the course goes forward we'll spend time journaling about our learning, spending time interacting with each other on Blackboard's discussion boards, and working through assignments that help to support what you'll be reading about in Chapters 1 and 2 of the text.

Classroom 2.0 Registrations

Wow. I'm really impressed, nearly 60% of the class has already responded to getting an account registered with Classroom 2.0!  I'm not sure I have this type of response in the past - perhaps it's the new Internet connection the college has been upgraded to.

Please note that an image is not categorically necessary at the CR2.0 site - though I will say that one way that teachers get to know their students better is by knowing what they look like.  I can't begin to imagine what it would be like to teach a class of 25 3rd graders who were all identical.  Thank God for the great diviersity that he's given us!

Tomorrow night, I'll formally introduce the course.  I've gone ahead and posted the Syllabus and related documents to the documents section in Blackboard.   We'll cover some general house keeping things, the major resources we'll be using throughout the course and then examine a basic level of technology integration.

Website registrations

Students, if you didn't see the email I sent via Blackboard today, please be sure to register in response to the invitation I sent you from PBwiki.com and register an account at Classroom 2.0.

Snail Mail sent

For those of you who already know you're in this course, this information will be more of a moot point to you, but I took the liberty of having campus mail place reminders in your campus mail boxes about when and where the course meets. And just to confirm - this course will meet in Richardson Hall, Room 127 on Tuesday evening at 6:00pm and run until 8:30pm. See you all then!

Introduction email sent

As classes begin tomorrow, I thought it appropriate to send out an introductory email to introduce myself informally and to begin the course informally.  Class will begin 'officially' on the 20th of January at 6:00pm in RH127.

Posting and Organizing Assignments

With technology changing all the time, it's hard to keep the same assignments - at least the exact same assignments and content from year to year.

To some extent the content does stay the same, and always - always the content provides a base for the course in order to reflect on how technology has and is changing.

Earlier this summer I was asked to create a white paper on the changes that would need to take place within an introductory graduate level course whose primary content was seated in hardware installation, maintainance and expertise.  I was excited about writing it because I understand just how much has changed - in large part because I've been through much of that change.

On the flip side though, the technology that's hi-lighted one year may be surpassed by some other technology the next, or as in one personal case, a technology in beta one semester may go 'pro' the next and require some type of minimal payment, necessitating it to be dropped from the assignment contingent.

This type of ebb and flow isn't without precident however.  Any good, well-experienced teacher who cares about what they teach and how they teach it, examines how well the methods and means of teaching went the previous semester, unit, week, or lesson to improve them in the next.  This re-examination only gets more dizzying when we understand how little technology stays the same and just how much it continues to change.

Just a few more days

It's just a few more days until everyone comes back from Christmas Break and begins heading back to get ready for the new semester.

I've been working slowly through getting the syllabus and assignment matrix revised for the new semester, and I'm very excited about getting it done and all the rest of class prep done by this week Friday (Jan 9).