Monday, September 24, 2012

Already another week has ended, and with it summer.  My classes are starting to feel more comfortable both with me and I with them.  I have some really great groups this semester, I can't think of one as being more "challenging" than another.  I have been really encouraging my classes to help one another and not rely on me to answer all of their questions.  I can see that this is a change for some students as they continue to raise their hand before seeing if a peer can help first.  I'll keep working on that, as I'd like to see us all as "teachers."

Now to summarize what we are doing in each class...

Desktop Publishing:  We have had some issues with printing, so have worked out a temporary solution which so far seems to be working.  Students are saving to a shared location if they are unable to print.  I can then print, and once printed I delete the file.  We have had our first quiz, which students did well on.  I'd like to get my next quiz set up in Moodle.  We'll be learning some new tools this coming week and talking about the issue of copyright.  I also will be touching base with each student about any missing work and questions they might have.  We had a speaker come in from the Art Institutes last week - it was informative, and interesting to see so many examples of creative work.

eTechnology:  Students are becoming more independent in their work.  Some are handling this well, but I do see a few others struggle with it.  This is something I need to think about, and makes me wonder how those types of students would handle a blended learning course.  Many of the students blog posts are well written and reflective.  I need to develop a blog rubric for future blogs.  I'll also be requiring they share them with a parent or another adult.  We have wrapped up a short Word unit and will be heading to Excel next.  Excel is often one of the harder units for students.  Finally, I am going to change the PowerPoint unit.  I am considering doing some kind of digital storytelling project and have some good resources to start with.

Mac Applications:  We've covered nearly everything for our Keynote project.  Students will be working on that next week and they are due at the end of the week.  I feel that they are a bit more challenged than they were with the Pages projects we did.  A few students worked really hard to create useful projects in Pages, going so far as to design their own graphics.  I have yet to decide which application we'll be heading to next.

Finally, our student teacher is in need of some new challenges.  I can sense it :)  Last week I got him out of our area to observe a variety of classes.  This week he'll be observing my eTechnology class and then next week taking over for a few weeks.  I hope he is getting something out of his stay here.

Monday, September 17, 2012

We've started getting into the curriculum in our classes, and the pace is a bit, well, intense.  We had our Back-to-School Night at the start of the week, which was fairly well attended in particular by the freshmen parents.  I just think the evening is too long for parents, perhaps a different format would work better for parents and staff?  An open house format, where parents can come for an hour or two after school and meet the teachers they'd like to?

In Desktop Publishing I am focusing on using Moodle to house more resources and tools that students can access.  I want to eventually have the students create screencasts.  I've used Screenr in the past, but I'd like to find a better tool.  I am also working on getting to know students individually, which in Desktop Publishing is sometimes challenging.

In eTechnology, my biggest challenge continues to be the overwhelming amount of tools available and which are best for students to learn.  We did a short Word unit, and will be heading to Excel next.  Via a survey using Google Docs and Moodle, Excel appears to be an area of weakness for most students.  As it is such a powerful tool, I think it is an important tool to use.  Students are blogging, and so far their posts are well written and informative.  They will be sharing these with their parents soon. We are using Blogger to blog.

Mac Applications feels like I am off to too slow of a start as we begin with Pages.  Students are pretty comfortable with most word processing application, so I have them do a few short projects, but like to move on to other applications.  I need to rethink the Pages unit all together.  We are beginning Keynote and the project is rather involved.

I am hoping to continue writing this blog all year to reflect upon and learn from my teaching.

Welcome to a new school year!

The new school year is here, and as one of my professional goals I am going to attempt to blog once per week.  That might not seem that often, however, I know how busy the weeks can be.  I am hoping to share this blog with others to learn and share what I am doing in my classrooms.
We began with a well-done presentation on formative assessment.  I did take away some valuable information in that presentation.  One of the ideas is to create Teacher Learning Communities.  This is an attempt to begin facilitating one for myself.  We also have a student teacher in our department this semester.  Wish him well, and I am so hoping he enjoys his time at VAHS.
As I begin the year, I am using Moodle in two of my courses:  Desktop Publishing and eTechnology.  In Desktop I will be using Moodle as a place to share information.  In eTechnology, students will be using more of the available tools.  A goal I have is to have a week's worth of curriculum ready to go on Monday with it due by Friday at midnight.  Students can then work at their own pace, work at home, at the library, etc.  I'm not there yet, but perhaps for next week?
I've not given much thought to my Mac Applications course...I need to get going on that ASAP!  Tomorrow the freshmen arrive, and Wednesday we are off and running.