Choices:

You will choose  among various projects to do five "Mouse Clicks" worth of Choice work.  You should decide on your  choices by the start of class time in the second week of the quarter. 

Ground Rules:

1. Your work on these projects should all have an authentic purpose for your teaching or professional development.  For example, you should use the Productivity Tools for Teachers for real work in your courses or in your placements.  You can use Google Docs, for example, to co-plan with your MT or to support a group project in a course.  Your goal is to explore not only the mechanics of these tools but also their potential place in your professional life.
2. You will show that you are committed to your own professional growth by choosing options that are new to you and that will stretch you.
3. I also am assuming your academic honesty and trust that the mouse clicks that created any of your final projects were all under your own control. I encourage you to consult, to ask people for advice, to work collaboratively, form work teams, negotiate with someone to be your Tech Buddy for the quarter.  And in the end, I require that you take that final step to work through problems to their solution.
4. It would be a good idea to post/upload your work to your tech portfolio as you go, so that you're keeping track of everything.
5. I'm assuming that each of your five "mouse clicks" represents approximately 2 hours of work.  This does not include time that you spend trying to remember user names of passwords!.   Remember:  Every credit of university coursework assumes approximately an hour of in-class time and 2-3 hours of out of class time.

One Click Options

1.    Use one of the tools in this article in one of two ways:  a) as a demonstration of something that a student could create to demonstrate learning of b) something that you'd create to help to explain complex material to students.   Can use up to three tools for up to three "clicks". (note:  a more comprehensive  Glogster project is listed below for two clicks)

2.  Create a new Photostory to demonstrate how the tool can be used to document learning:  Document a science investigation, explain some challenging concept, demonstrate your skill at something.  Minimum:  3 minutes long, audio, images, and text.   NOTE: CAN BE USED FOR YOUR SCIENCE INQUIRY.

Two Click Options

1.  Skype

Initiate a Skype video conference for a real professional purpose: Meeting with your MT, FI, or instructor, someone in the cohort with whom you have to collaborate, a distant "expert" whose perspective you seek.  Alternatively, connect kids in your classroom with someone at least two time zones or one international border away.  Experiment with the features:  Send a file, use chat.  Documentation:  Learn how to take screen shots to document stages of the call, or have someone document it with a video or still camera.  On macs, Skitch is great.  Jing also works works well for screen shots.  On macs with Snow Leapord OS, you can capture video from your screen with Quicktime.

 

 

2.  Google Maps

 

Create a My Map on Google Maps to support something that you'll be teaching --community study, geography lesson, mapping the events in a piece of fiction (one year a high school student in my class created a great map of all the locations in The DaVinci Code).  You must include Images, annotations, and if appropriate, one piece of video.   Attach at least 8 pins.  See more on the Google Maps and Mash Ups page of this wiki.  See the Images in Teaching page for info on finding pictures of particular locations.

 

3.  Social Bookmarking

 

Allows you to  post bookmarks to a webpage instead of to your "favorites", so that you can access them from any computer, share them with others, and learn from others  who are bookmarking on similar topics. 

 

Two options for earning these clicks.

 

1.  If you are collaborating with others on a project fo another course or planning similar units, Create a group on Del.icio.us or Diigo to collaborate in compiling internet bookmarks for a shared interest or project such as unit planning.   There must be at least three people in your group, and each must contribute at least 10 bookmarks with annotations.  Your group must be public.  See the Social Bookmarking Page for more resources.

 

2. Join the UWB Tech group that I've set up on Diigo and share at least 10 bookmarks with the group. These must be tech-related sites.  Annotate these in at least a few sentences.

 

 

4.  Glogster.  NOTE:  CAN BE USED FOR SCIENCE INQUIRY PROJECT.  Create a multimedia poster on Glogster to demonstrate how kids might document their learning after a project or how you might introduce resources for a unit.   

• An example of a student project is here. 
• Another, embedded on a wiki is here. 
• A multimedia book review is here. 

 

Three Click Options

Do either of these for 3 clicks.

 

  1.  Tech Tool Box:

 

Compile your own tech toolbox for at least 2 units that you'll be teaching in Spring: 

 

• Include mutltimedia:  audio, video, images, wikis that will support differentiation.
• Set up a voicethread project.
• Bookmark websites for you to learn and from which your kids can learn (see resources on the Web Tools Recommendations from Other Educators  page on this wiki for ideas).
• Devise at least one way for your kids to commumicate directly with others beyond your classroom from whom they could learn (on-line collaboration sites, blogging, wiki page, podcasting).  See the Web Tools Recommendations from Other Educators page for examples of international and national collaborations.
• You may want to focus particularly on accomodations for kids with special needs (check out voice recognition in Word,  Google Sketch Up's project for autistic kids, podcasting as an alternative to writing, etc).
• Organize your toolbox on any of the tools we've used: Create a Wiki, blog, Weebly.
• The tool box must be comprehensive, represesent at least 6 hours of work on your part,  be shown to your MT and FI. Include feedback from each (in any form that they're comfortable with -- audio could be fun!) in your turn-in to me.   Include a log of how you spent your time in compilng your toolbox. 

Primary teachers:  Check out the multiple primary tools and websites that I've book marked here

2.  Adapt 4 lessons for Special Needs and/or ELL students by differentiating instruction via technology.

Include lesson plans and the specific ways that you'll accommodate diverse learners by providing alternatives to words, paper and pencil for teaching and for demonstrating what has been learned.

Check resources on the English Language Learners page and/or the Special Needs page.

Describe specific ways you'll incorporate multi-media, video, photostory, specific adaptive technologies, or creative uses of other digital tools to teach and assess these children.

Four Click Option

1.   Advanced Blogging/Creating A Professional Network 

 

 

• Blog about professional issues.  You may do this individually or with a group.
• Subscribe to at least 5 new professional blogs  and continue to explore who they have in their blogroll.  See the Professional Networking page for  teaching blogs.  See theRSS (Subscribing to Blogs and News Sources) page for resources on subscribing to blogs. 
• Post to your blog every week -- more if you can.  
• Comment at least every  week on something outside the cohort (more internally!).

Then, do at least 5 of the following to build a professional network around blogging:

• Join the Classroom 2.0 social network and post here at least three times.  
• Add at least 3 more external blogs to your own blog roll. 
• Use Trackback/Ping (depending on your platform)  to let someone else know when you've quoted or linked to their blog in your own blog.
• Leave your URL when you comment on (On Blogger, you'll need HTML code:  <a href="/yourblogURL/">The Name of Your Blog</a>). 
• Set up Google Blog Alerts so that you get email notices when someone is blogging on your topic of interest.  Search in Google for Blogs only and follow directions for setting up alerts.
• Do any 5 of the 30 additional things recommended in the series of blog posts 30 Days to Better Blogging.

 

2. Participate in a Professional Network on Twitter

 

          Resources, directions, and examples of teacher collaboration and use of Twitter for classroom use can be found on the Twitter Page.

 

Five click Options

1.  Advanced movie making 

Make a 10 minute movie using Imovie on Mac or Movie Maker on PC.  The topic may be something that you'd ask kids to produce as part of your teaching or something that you'll use to teach a concept in student teaching.  Find excellent tutorials on the Video in the Classroom page.

Include:

• Video clips
• Still photos
• Music
• Voice Over
• Transitions that serve a clear purpose (beyond demonstrating how many transitions there are!)
• At least two pans and two zooms.
• Save in two formats: One to DVD and one for viewing on the web.

2. Podcasting

Create a series of at least 6 podcasts on a topic about which you'd like to teach others.  Garage Band or Posterous to send your audio files to Itunes or on a PC, record with Audacity and upload to a site with an RSS feed   (and then to ITunes) for public access.    See the Podcasting and the Audio page  for more resources and ideas.  

     Each episode must include introductory jingle and closing jingle. Each must be at least 3 minutes long.