Hi Folks: Today Google Earth unveiled a Web Site called Google Earth Outreach to support people and organizations who are interested in bringing awareness to outreach efforts around the world. According to Google: “Outreach gives non-profits and public benefit organizations like yours the knowledge and resources you need to reach their minds and their hearts”
This article on the All Africa News Web Site gives a nice view of the story.
In the Layers window of Google Earth, where you check and uncheck layers, you will find a box titled global awareness. When you click on the triangle to the left of the global awareness layer, you will be able to reveal many layers you can check and view. All of these are layers created by Google to increase global awareness about a number of issues.
You can add images directly into your placemark popup boxes in Google Earth
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I hope your break gave you an opportunity for some renewal. I spent a few days in Bend with my family and the the rest of the time back at home. Breaks are a good time to reorient yourself; so, as we move into April, I wanted to give you an overview of the last half of our class. Be sure to check the syllabus and project descriptions for the finer details on all the projects.
Webquests and Web-Based Tools
The Webquests (and Explore Learning Gizmo evaluations for the math and science folks) are due on April 4, this Friday. Each one of the assignments should be posted to your blog. There is no need to send me anything via email. Simply be sure to post by Friday 12 P.M. and you will be good to go. I will have computer lab office hours from 8-9 A.M and 12-1 P.M. on Monday and Wednesday and Jesse is in the lab everyday from 8:30-5:00.
For those of you doing a Webquest, a few reminders for you. Remember that the content is the most important thing! Your clarity, cleverness, and creativity give your Webquest the power. Be sure that you are asking your students to complete a task that requires them to think deeply about a topic and use web-based resources to complete the project. Have fun with it.
As you move closer to completing your Webquest and you begin to consider formatting and using pictures on your page, you should use images that add to the content. You can upload your images to your page by using he upload tab directly below your page editing window. You simply browse for the picture on your computer (this means you have to know where the picture is saved on your computer) and when you find it you click upload. The picture should magically appear in your page editing window. Once it is there, you can edit it if you click on it and then click on the insert image button on your toolbar.
For the math science folks who are learning about Gizmos, you can upload some screen shots of your Gizmos to enhance your post.
A link that explains how to take screen shots if you have a Mac.
A link that explains how to take a screen shots in Windows.
The Remaining Projects
You have three projects remaining to complete in the class after the web project:
Geospatial Tools Project
Digital Video or Podcast Project (your choice)
Interactive Whiteboard project. During the final class session you will be doing a microteach using the Smartboard.
Oregon Technology Education Network (OTEN) Conference Saturday April 12th
On April 12th we will be attending the OTEN Spring Conference at Pacific University in Forest Grove. OTEN is a consortium of liberal arts colleges in Oregon. OTEN was formed eight years ago with the purpose of securing grants to support the integration of technology into our teacher education programs. We have received a number of grants to support our work over the years. We are currently in the fourth year of a five year 1.5 million dollar Teacher Quality Enhancement Grant from the Federal Department of Education.
The grant supports our statewide efforts to support our students, student teachers, mentor teachers, and university faculty who are integrating technology into their work. A good portion of our funds are directed to supporting the distribution of minigrants. The presenters at The Spring Conference are students and classroom teachers who received minigrants in 2007. They are your peers. They will be giving informal and interactive 20 minute roundtable presentations about the projects they completed using the grant money they received from OTEN.
You can get all the information you need about the conference from at the OTEN Conference Web Page. Here you will be able to:
1. Register for the conference.
2. Get directions and a map.
3. View a schedule of the presentations.
The conference keynote address starts at 8:30 A.M. There is a free lunch after the last presentation. You can stay for lunch, or take it with you to eat on the drive home. The conference ends at 12 P.M. The drive to Forest Grove takes about 2 hours and 15 minutes. Every year some students stay in Portland or Forest Grove on Friday. The McMenamins Grand Lodge in Forest Grove is a nice and affordable place to stay if you are considering staying overnight. They have a few nice bars, a restaurant, a movie theater and other activities going on there. It’s about six blocks from Pacific University.
As I said earlier, our grant supports the distribution of minigrants to students. During our class next week I will outline the grant application process for you. The big benefit of attending the conference is to see models of successful grant applications. As the campus coordinator on the Eugene Campus, I will oversee the grant process here. We will be able to fund approximately 8-10 student minigrants. You will be able to apply for a minigrant of up to $750 to purchase equipment you would use in your classroom to execute a technology-enhanced lesson. Successful grant applicants will have to use the equipment in a lesson during your student teaching (of course you can and will use it more often, but for the purpose of meeting the requirements of the grant, you will need to use it in a specific lesson). In addition to lesson, grantees will be required to participate in some post-teaching assessment and agree to present at the 2009 OTEN Spring Conference. You will get to keep the equipment you receive for the duration of your teaching career. The equipment is technically owned by OTEN and loaned to you for the duration of your teaching career.
After you attend the conference and as a result of taking our class, your mind will should be spinning with ideas for ways in which you might be able to use technology in your teaching. In June you will spend a few weeks in your major placement with the mentor teacher you will be working with in the fall. If you are interested in applying for a grant, you should talk to your mentor teacher about a project you might complete in the fall that would include some technology. After this, you can complete the grant application form which is due June 27th.
mark s.
Project Support
I have built in a wide range of support for each project. Depending on your personal preferences, you can use the kind of support that meets your needs. My goal in this class is to help you develop a set of skills that will allow you to become an independent and self-regulated learner. I want you to feel supported, but I also want you to learn to support yourself which means developing a skill set for the tools, but also a set of professional dispositions for learning. When I introduce a project I will give an overview, identify the important elements, show you some models, and model the foundational skills needed to use the tool.
When you begin to work on a project it’s important to have a plan and budget the time necessary to complete a project that reflects your skills and commitment to excellence. There are no extended reading assignments for the class because I want you to use your time to complete your projects.
When you begin to work on your project, you will be able to rely on a wide range of resources depending on your needs. The best and quickest way to work through a software problem is to use the Atomic Learning Tutorials. These tutorials are organized by software. You can use them to help you learn to do a specific task, or you can move through the series of videos to help you develop a more comprehensive understanding of the tool. This support is available to you 24 hours a day from any computer in the world. Remember your log in is: pacificu, and your password is pacificu.
In addition to Atomic Learning, Jesse and I are available to work with you in the lab on a drop in basis. Jesse is in the lab from 8:30-5 Monday-Friday. He does take lunch and has other meetings to attend at different times, but he is in the lab available to help the majority of the day. I am happy to work with you in the lab during my office hours as well. If you can’t make those, email me and we can schedule a time to meet that works for both of us.
Project Process
Here is a to do list in order for the first project.
1. Read the project description closely and use the online resources that are built into the project description. Pay close attention to the scoring guide. It is the organizing framework for assessment.
2. Budget the time to work on the project using all your resources. Get started early if you can.
3. Select a benchmark from the Oregon State Standards Newspaper that you will use to guide your project. You can download a pdf file of the newspaper or search it online at the ODE Standards web site. The link to download a copy of the newspaper is in the lower left hand corner of the page.
4. When you are close to completing the project use the scoring guide to assess the project yourself. Assessment is one skill you will develop as a teacher. So, it’s good practice 
. After your own assessment, you will need to get a peer review and complete a peer review for someone else. You can do this online by sending your diagram via email to your peer. They will assess it and sent it back to you with their written assessment in an email. At that point, it’s your choice to make any changes they suggest. When you complete a peer review for someone else your feedback should be done using the scoring guide. For this case you will give them feedback based on the three areas of the scoring guide, structure, content, and appearance. All of this is in the spirit of improving your project before you submit it to me for assessment.
5. Post your reflection on the blog. As stated in the syllabus, your blog post should include the following three elements:
1. Your peer review. Cut and past the peer review you received into your blog post.
2. A description of how you might use the project and the benchmark the project is designed to meet.
3. Describe the cognitive assimilation and / or accommodation you experienced as a result of completing the project.
6. Name your file using your firstname and first initial of your last name plus the number of the project. For example I would name my inspiration file “marks1″ You can send me your assignment two different ways. If your file is small enough to be sent via email (less than 4MB). You can simply email it to me as an attachment. If your project is larger than this (usually because the graphics you inserted are higher resolution), you can use a free service called yousendit. Simply sign up for a free account, follow their set of instructions. It’s pretty basic and easy to use. Your assignment is due at midnight on March 17th.
Let me know if you have any questions.
mark s.
