CEP 812 Group Leadership Project: Part B - Storyboard and Script

Here is my group’s script and story board for our Leadership Project.  We collaborated using Skype and using a Google doc and Google presentation.  Our project focuses creating an interactive lesson on Moodle.  As a group we had quite a bit of experience using Moodle in our classrooms and wanted to share some techniques that can be used to create effective lessons  on Moodle.

The portion of lesson creation that I focused on was creating questions and responses in Moodle.  I also explained how to set up the grading on each question.

Story Board and script

I created the portion about adding questions to Moodle, it starts on slide 17.

CEP 811: School Wikipedia Page

I was searching for my school (Union High School) on Wikipedia and found that there wasn’t a page for the school.  I was able to find my district’s page (Grand Rapids Public Schools) on Wikipedia but it had no information and links to pages about the 5 high schools in the district. 

 I clicked on the linked to my high school and found nothing, so it offered me an opportunity to edit the page.

Here is the article that I created.  Union High School Grand Rapids, MI

I added some general information about the school just to get the page started.  I hope that sometime in the future that my article will be built upon to create a more complete description of my school.   This is my first year at this school and I am still learning about what all the school has to offer and would like to see if anyone else from my school has something to contribute.

Wicked Problem Project: Part A - Description of Need or Opportunity CEP812

My educational need that I would like to meet is a way to allow for students to better understand the content that they are reading in the blended science program, particular students that are struggling readers and ESL students.

 I would like to find an affordable, quality reader program and translation program) to meet the needs of students require materials read to them.  I have many students with low reading levels and that are ESL students. In each of my blended science classes I have students that several different learning abilities.  I feel that have a quality program that can read and/or translate material will help them with their learning.  This will help differentiate instruction and give students more control over their learning.

This program should be used on a daily basis in the classroom.  I would like to see the reader program be available to all students and staff to help differentiate learning.

My plan:

·         Research and compare reading and translation programs focusing on accuracy, ease of use and cost.

·         Test the programs in a classroom setting with multiple learners with multiple needs.

·         Work with the district technology coordinator to get the program in the classrooms.

For this to be successful I will need the full support of my district and their technology department.  I will also need to buy/find etc. a program that can be easily loaded on to student computers.

CEP 811: UDL Lab

Here is the UDL check list for the lesson that I created.

I found that I met several of the needs of check list in this lesson, though I do think I could vary the ways that students present their ideas more.

Assignment: PART A - Brainstorm session CEP 812

Scott, Dan and myself decided to focus on Moodle as our technology to present.  Through brainstorming we found that all of us have had experience using the site and can gain access to it for our project. 

 

We used a couple different conferencing tools for brain storming:

·         We used the forum group set for us in Angel for preliminary planning and scheduling a time for all of use to get together. 

·         On Sunday morning and evening we used an Adobe Meeting room to make plans for our project and to decide who was going to do what for the project.

·         Throughout the brainstorming process we posted our ideas to a google doc.

The advantages to using a Adobe Meeting room to discuss the project was that we could meet face to face to discuss ideas and we could share our computer screens with each other to demonstrate ideas and show examples. 

The main disadvantage of using the web conference tool was finding a common time that they 3 of us could get together to be on at the same time.  Though this is something that has to be dealt with in any group work.

Adobe Connect could be used to connects students to other classrooms around the world, it can also be used to connect students content experts (for example, if I wanted to have a guest speaker about genetics for my biology class I could).  Lastly, it can be used to teach lessons from home.  I say this because, there were a few days this winter that I couldn't get to work because the roads were so bad (I drive about 45 minutes to work everyday) so I had to call in, this would remedy the problem of me not being in the classroom.

Here are links to our first and second brain storming sessions.

Session 1 (I was unable to make it to this one, but it was nice that I could go back and watch it, that allowed me to go back and make comments on our google doc)

Session 2

Video Intro

This a brief introduction about myself that I created using powerpoint and Jing.

CLICK HERE!

MERLOT Lesson Review: DNA From the Beginning

http://www.dnaftb.org/

This software is a large collection of different multimedia resources about DNA and genetics.  It presents concepts that are accurate and that are educationally significant.  As a teaching tool this software could be used for explanation and demonstration.  It presents a lot of content that can be used to enhance lectures and allows for student exploration of the topic of DNA.

The characteristics of the target learn is one that is looking to further/supplement their current knowledge of DNA.  This site could be easily integrated into an existing biology curriculum to help demonstrate different genetics concepts. It includes a variety of ways that topics can be explored (through animation, video, reading etc.), this allows the software to be used in several different ways to achieve different learning goals and reach all types of learners.

The learning goals of this resource are fairly easy to identify through the titles of each section and concept covered.  Students could easily complete assignments using this tool and teachers would be able to easily integrate it into a lesson.

The resource is fairly easy to use and navigate.  The interface of the site is easy to figure out and navigate, though when creating an assignment using this site it will be important to give clear directions for where you would want to students to go to in the site seeing that there are several options, a student could easily get lost in the content because there are so many collections of information.

I feel that students would enjoy using this site because it allows them to research topics in genetics in a more organized and concentrated way.  It also has several different ways that the content is presented and this allows for flexibility for meeting learning needs.