WebQuest

I found this assignment to be a little more time consuming than the others, but very useful. This would be an excellent way to integrate technology into any subject area. It also seems to be a wonderful resource for publishing lessons or units so that students could have access to them from home or school.

I chose to publish my WebQuest using the ftp location. After trying different places this location seemed to work best with the format of my resource documents that supplement the WebQuest I developed.


WebQuest

Fun with Data

I really enjoyed these assignments and I can see where you would use them in the classroom. I had never worked with spreadsheets before and I learned new things with each assignment. Each time I found a simpler way or shortcut to calculate formulas. I found out that many older teachers still use this as a way to calculate grades but there are many grade programs which I am sure use spreadsheets in the program.

The link to the data is below


Spreadsheet

Online quiz

I thought the google docs assessment form assignment was great this is definitely one assignment that I will use again in my classes. I really think however we should have allowed everyone to look at our quiz.

Movie maker powerpoint

I completed this movie and found it was very easy to do and uploading took a little time. The link to my movie is below

Movie

Rubistar assessment

Here is my Rubric that created for a writing assignment for a unit on the Revolutionary War. The student would be writing a persausive essay to the King of England much like Thomas Paine did. The link to the rubric is below

Rubric

Presentation Embedded

View my embedded Jeopardy PowerPoint below.

Jeopardy quiz

I found this assignment a little time consuming and somewhat of old school when you can use much simpler quiz creators. If you would want to do a review of this sort it would be much simpler to use Quia.com as a review site. However, for someone who doesn't have a subscription this would work. Here is my powerpoint quiz I created linked below.

PowerPoint Quiz

Webpage

I can see a big difference in all three posts when opening the links, this was definitely a good assignment for future teachers. Utilizing various methods of uploading a PowerPoint has many uses in the educational setting. The link for my web page is below.


Web page

PowerPoint show

I did see the difference between a PowerPoint and a PowerPoint Show it did look much more professional when opening. Once again I learned a great deal by doing it as a show, the link for my PowerPoint show is linked below.

PowerPoint Show

Powerpoint

This wasn't a lesson for my students but as staff development I did for my school, I made some changes to the PowerPoint for this class by adding some graphics. I thought this PowerPoint may be beneficial for someone starting out in the special education field as an overview so feel free to use if you want. PowerPoint has got to be one of the best technology tools a teacher can use in the classroom, this was a great assignment. My PowerPoint is linked below.


PowerPoint

Podcast

I found this a very agravating assignment because of problems with the voice over, which I never did solve, so you will hear a voice over. Also, I couldn't I could see how this 21st century strategy would be useful in the classroom if you allowed students to hear the instruction through an ipod, but for me it wouldnt be something I would not like because it has no visual component to learning. My script and my audio are linked below. Click on the 'Listen Now' link to hear it.









Podcast Script

Web album

I added a few pictures from a Pittsburgh Steelers game and a picture of my wife and kids at Disney World two years ago. If you haven't noticed I am a huge Steelers fan. The link to my album is :http://www.photoshop.com/user/Mferguson/?galleryid=5ba5d1c54858479bb3f4f33155f68903&wf=share&trackingid=BTAGC

Photoshop Express

I had alot of fun playing with photoshop express. The tools were very user friendly and this is an account that I will use again.


http://www.photoshop.com/user/Mferguson/?galleryid=443db1c2e7554f56859199fc283a1a5d&wf=share&trackingid=BTAGC

Crappy graphic

I felt that this was the easiest graph by far to create and I could see it having a wide range of use in the classroom. Using Venn diagrams is a great way to show how data can crossover into different fields. The link to my crappy graphic is http://crappygraphs.com/user_graphs/?id=2740

Online graphics

What I found about West Virginia compared to the national average is that we are consistently behind the national average in the years from 2000 to 2005. Looking at the trends it seems as if the state declined for several years before rebounding somewhat in 2007. The graph to the left shows the NAEP trends.

What I can conclude from the data is that West Virginia has one of the lowest income per capita and has the lowest number of IEP's. The graph to the right illustrates this conclusion.

The data for the NAEP chart was found on the following website: http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/states/profile.asp

The data for the IEP vs. Income Per Capita was found on two different sites. Theincome data was found on the following website:

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0104652.html

The IEP data was found on this site:

http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2001/overview/table10.asp

To create both of these graphs I used the suggested Kid's Zone website: http://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/graphing/classic/

Image Capture

The program that I used for this assignment was Microsoft Paint. I saved my graphic as a jpeg file, and the size was 21.3 KB with the dimensions of 774 x 189. I acquired my graphic from the my school home page and the Acuity website using the print screen key. I then cropped the link to the Acuity testing and the log in areas for the user name and password.

Currently, at my school we are using Acuity as standardized test practice prior to WESTEST to acquire benchmarks. I felt this graphic would be beneficial to show students how and where to log in to the Acuity site.

These types of images are a wonderful tool for creating 'How to' guides for the students. In addition to showing them how to log in to websites, I could also create instructions for various software programs. For example, I could create an instruction guide for Microsoft PowerPoint or Word and could insert actual screen captures so they could more easily follow the instructions. These types of instructions would especially benefit students that are visual learners.

My graphic is posted above.

Desktop image

I thought that the human brain would be a great image to upload for this assignment. The parts of the brain that have arrows are the areas of the brain that is used for different styles of learning.

Reading Response to Edgar Dale

I understand what Edgar Dale was meaning when he created the Cone of Experience but after reading I see how much it has been misinterpreted or misrepresented in other studies. I do agree with the cone but I feel it is somewhat out of date with new technology and media. My narrative response is linked below.

Narrative

ftp Experience

I had a considerable amount of trouble with the FTP assignment, so it goes without saying I have no experience at all with FTP. The biggest problem I had was that I was trying to do this assignment at my workplace and they have firewalls that don't allow file transfers so I thought it was a FTP problem. Below is a link to my FTP document.


http://www2.fairmontstate.edu/users/mferguson/ferguson_ftp.doc

Resume

Hello, I hope my resume is sufficient for the course assignment. I must say that this is the first time I have ever done a resume where I have a lot of good experiences and education. This was a great assignment for technology as well as self awareness. I have linked my resume above. The URL is listed (and linked) below:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dc4wmsht_0hm23dzf6

Photo story

Finished my photo story and I must say it was much like doing a powerpoint, but a little more time consuming. I am looking forward to viewing other peoples photo stories to put a face with a name. Here is my photo story.

Introduction to specific outcomes

Looking over the eleven goals for the course, I feel that for me already being a teacher all will be very useful outcomes after completing the course. With 21st century learning being the State Superintendents goal for all students in public education we as teachers need to strive to improve instructional technology through various means. To develop higher level thinking we need to challenge our students to use all technological resources that are available whether it be through the internet or by other non-traditional means.
The one goal that really stands out to me is to engage in learning activities that require them to analyze information, think creatively, make predictions, and/or draw conclusions using classroom technology resources. To me this goal is very important because it allows for students to learn using higher levels of Bloom's in the classroom. This is very important because students need to be challenged in the higher levels of thinking skills and by using technology we as teachers can use various means to incorporate higher level thinking skills.

My first time blogging.

Hello everyone, my name is Michael Ferguson and I teach at Philip Barbour High School. I have been there for 4 years now. I am currently in my last semester of my master's program and looking forward to graduating. I am also looking forward to all the new technology I will be learning. In a short amount of time I have created a GMail account, made a call using Skype, created a blog, and used Google Docs. I can definitely see why this course will be useful for teachers to communicate with colleagues and parents.