Week 12 - Website

Finance Website

I decided to create a Finance website because of all the possibilities.  I wish I had endless amounts of time to truly create it to the best of my ability, but unfortunately, time is not on my side these days.  However, I will be forever grateful that my professor assigned this for me to struggle and learn how to create a website.  I believe that when you struggle through something, you are able to learn and retain more knowledge because of the struggle. 

To start, I included a quote from Dave Ramsey and would continue to update that on either a daily or weekly basis.  I am a huge fan of his and believe in many of his principles.  He also is a very funny man and his blog is full of great information.  I, next, included a spot for a "Student of the Week" (my girls are there right now because I didn't want to use a student's picture without their parents' permission.  However, I believe it is extremely important to encourage and recognize students for their work, attitude, effort, etc.  I also added a "Homework" spot because I know how important it is for students to quickly be able to see what is most important to them.  In that same section, I put in an "Announcements" section for anything of great importance and to them, spring break is very important!

The gadget I decided to include on the home page was a "Top Stories" gadget because I believe it is important to stay current on all news, financial or otherwise.  It helps a student to be more well-rounded and generally knowledgeable on a variety of topics. 

On the left of my home page, you can click on a "Syllabus" link which leads you to what a dual enrollment class is all about.  It also includes an attachment of their actual syllabus and what they can expect for each and every day of the trimester.  I put another picture of my daughter here with her little Superwoman costume on in order to add a little fun and humor to the topic but also to convey that you can be "super" with your finances and live life freely without debt.

On this page I also included a calendar gadget as it pertains to their syllabus schedule.  I thought that they might want to check their days to an actual calendar. 

Concept Mapping

I have used and will continue to use concept mapping in my Career class. I used bubbl.us, had my students create their own account and assigned them to create a concept map including the following information: 1. The middle circle is titled "Career Interest Areas" 2. The middle circle of bubbles should include all of the 12 career interest areas. 3. In addition to what you see here, my students went even further and added 5 different types of jobs to each of the career interest areas. In the end, their concept map was enormous but they were very engaged and learning. Some students will take the time to change the colors of the bubbles and do extra formatting.

Jing for Uploading Picture Demonstration

I use Jing in order to demonstrate to my Yearbook students how to upload a picture they've saved to their desktop to our Pictavo website. Pictavo is the website we use to create our yearbook. Students are required to upload a total of approximately 12-10 pictures per week depending on how many pages they have been assigned to. I demonstrate in class how to upload but many times the students will forget and need to be refreshed on how to do it when the time actually comes.

Google Map - Walt Disney

View Famous Entrepreneur - Walt Disney in a larger map

Week 8 Google Map Lesson Plan

GOOGLE MAPS ASSIGNMENT I would be able to use Google Maps in about all of my classes as an assignment but the class that came to mind first was my Entrepreneurship class. Bell Work: When students walk in the classroom, their bell work would be to sit down, open their laptops, and research an entrepreneur they would like to know more about. (5-7 Minutes) I already have them do a Prezi about a famous entrepreneur and present it to the class. This would easily be an added bonus to the presentation. They could have a link to their Google Map in their Prezi. After bell work time is complete we would go around the room and mention who each student would like to research so we don’t have any duplicates. After each student knows who they will be researching, I would show the video and informative links to Google Maps I had to do for this assignment (I have them saved in my Delicious account). Once we go over how to create a map, I would ask for any clarification and then give them the guidelines and expectations for their maps. I would also show them an example that I have created in order for them to see what is expected of them. Guidelines would include the following: • Where the entrepreneur was born and when • Any cities they lived in • Schools they attended • Where they are now or where they died • What they are known for • Any other points of interest they might find during their research o Favorite spots of that person I would give them about 2 days during class to work on this (2 hours total) and anything else would be homework outside the classroom. They would all then present their Prezi to the class with the Google Maps integrated as a link.

Week 7 - Instructional Design in Business and Industry

As I read chapter 18, I was amazed by the many connections to the teaching profession. Because we teach a multitude of students, we are encountered by a multitude of cultures and learning abilities (or disabilities), not to mention all of the family and emotional/mental situations behind the scenes. “Instructional design today encompasses much more than simply producing instruction. It is now associated with analyzing human performance problems, identifying root causes of those problems, considering a variety of solutions to address the root causes, and determining and implementing the appropriate solutions (Rothwell & Kazanas, 2008)” (p. 178). Immediately I thought of struggling students. As a teacher we need to identify where and why the student is struggling and from there implement a strategy to provide a suitable solution. Not only do we have the great responsibility of designing lesson plans and teaching, we also have the great responsibility of evaluating, revising, and implementing new strategies. Along these same lines is the fact that we are teaching cross-culturally every single day. “In one instructional event, numerous societal cultural factors may be present in the representation of a cross-cultural workforce” (p. 182). While it is not the exact same thing, we do have different situations we are teaching to every single day. Another similarity I found in this chapter from business to teaching is the idea of a client role. “One problem designers face when starting a new project is identifying the client with the primary decision making responsibility” (p. 180). So many times, a teacher will get different answers from different people, causing misunderstanding and confusion. It is great when the roles of each teacher and administrator are clear. Also in this section, it discusses “instructional designers may experience frustration when designing instruction due to the lack of client understanding of the instructional design process” (p. 180). If administration is going to be requiring teachers to implement something new, they themselves need to make sure they know what it is all about and are trained on it themselves. The next area I found that tied to teaching was the “Better, Faster, Cheaper” section (p. 183), particularly when it discusses technology-based training. We have recently implemented a one-to-one laptop policy this past year in order to expedite several different processes. The administration followed several different schools who had done the same thing in order to provide for a “prototype” for what our school would model.

Week 5 Photo Sharing :)

AngieParker1978's photostream on Flickr.