Powerpoint Animations

Today in class we focused on animations used in powerpoint presentations. We did basic animations such as making text appear at a click, custom animation, making labels to appear by a click, and making labels appear by clicking a "show answers" button. To exhibit some of our skills, we then created a screencast of a few of our animations.





This activity supports NETS standard 3, substandard a, which states that teachers should: "demonstrate fluency in technology systems and the transfer of current knowledge to new technologies and situations." Knowing the different animations and how to do them would help us to create powerpoints with "old" information using "new" technology.

PowerPoint Presentation

This week's classes were held exclusively on the internet. We were assigned to create a Powerpoint presentation that features one of our content standards within our major. I used the topic of reporting, because it's important to keep students interested when you're giving the instructions, plus it's a topic I intend to use in a lesson plan that I'm doing for my English Methods class. I broke the powerpoint down in the same way that Brenman does in "Thirst".

Reporting 101

View more presentations from jstanley7.

I found the three supplementary readings very helpful, though Splane was perhaps the most straightforward. I particularly used Splane's tips, but the article I found most interesting was by Elisabeth Bumiller . It was fascinating to see the military perspective on Powerpoints and how they use them (with emphasis on how they no longer want to use them). Something that particularly caught my eye was when Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander, said “PowerPoint makes us stupid”. That's definitely something to think about when planning a lesson plan, because you have to wonder just how much we spoonfeed students. The last website was merely an example of a good presentation, but it was awesome to see in action someone who actually used some of the rules from the other site (maybe not that site in particular, but something along those lines).




This project could represent many of the NETS Standards, but I think it primarily represents Standard 3, Substandard c, which states that teachers should "communicate relevant information and ideas effectively to students, parents, and peers using a variety of digital-age media and formats." This standard is true to the project because as teachers we have to keep students engaged and not lose their attention with boring powerpoints.

Batchgeo

For today's (virtual) synchronous class, we completed the activity of creating a Batchgeo table in two steps. The first step for the activity was to complete a googledoc by filling in columns with information such as our addresses, phone numbers and other personal information. The second step, creating a map via Batchgeo, was done by pasting the information from the spreadsheet into their formatting option. This then allows you to create a map with the information given.





This activity demonstrates NETS Standard 3, substandard a, which says that teachers should demonstrate fluency in technology systems and the transfer of current knowledge to new technologies and situations. Since one of my specializations is school library media, one way to use this website in the classroom would be to choose a book that has been banned in many places and use Batchgeo to see on the map if there is a certain area (for example, the midwest), that bans the book more than other geographic areas.

Web Publishing

For this activity, we used GoogleDocs to either publish a resume previously created in Microsoft or to create a resume for future use. In my case, I edited slightly a resume that I utilized over the summer to apply for the Freshman Counselor Program at FSU.

I was honestly surprised about how much of my formatting made it through the conversion. Still not really sure how it happened, though perhaps it has to do with the fact that it was a word document instead of a spreadsheet.

This activity is representative of NETS standard 3, substandard a, which states that teachers: demonstrate fluency in technology systems and the transfer of current knowledge to new technologies and situations. Basically we're taking the age old process of creating resumes and putting a new twist on it-- students would be able to access their resumes any time they needed them.

Google Calendar

I'd done some work with Google calendar in the past as part of Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship, a campus organization, but had never before embedded a calendar for public consumption.







This calendar activity reflects NETS standard 3, substandard c, which says that teachers should: communicate relevant information and ideas effectively to students, parents, and peers using a variety of digital-age media and formats. In this case, the calendar provides an unique opportunity for the teacher and parents to view the classroom calendar.

JEA Conference

The Journalism Education Association will be having a convention November 11-14 in Kansas City, Missouri. The keynote addresses will be made by some of the nation’s top newsmakers and reporters. The theme of the conference is K-Converge, and it costs $105 up until October 21, when the price rises by $10.

This activity supports standard 5, substandard a, which states that teachers should: participate in local and global learning communities to explore creative applications of technology to improve student learning; as well as substandard c, which says that teachers need to: evaluate and reflect on current research and professional practice on a regular basis to make effective use of existing and emerging digital tools and resources in support of student learning.

Both of these can be reflected by attending the conference because it is the teacher's responsibility to continually seek out technology that would be beneficial to the education of their students. Conferences hosted by education associations similar to that of the teachers specializations will give the teachers a more focused opportunity to learn about technological advances in their fields.

Excel Spreadsheet 2

For this Excel Spreadsheet, we received a copy of data that showed students grades on two homework assignments, two projects, and two tests. We learned that the homework and projects were worth a combined total of 50% of the students letter grade, while the other 50% were made up from the test scores. We calculated the averages for each category and each student, as well as the min, the max, and the range. Once we finished this, we were able to convert the averages into letter grades by using the "IF" function. Afterwards we were able to format them into more aesthetically pleasing spreadsheets.

The finished grading chart, as seen in GoogleDocs

This project was good practice for when we as teachers have to keep an electronic grade book. Some schools don't have the luxury of online grading systems that do the formatting for them.

After we completed the assignment, our projects were uploaded to GoogleDocs. This assignment used NETS standard 5, substandard d, which states that teachers: "contribute to the effectiveness, vitality, and self-renewal of the teaching profession and of their school and community."

APA Paper

After we finished our Excel spreadsheet, we wrote an APA paper based on our information from the spreadsheet. Through this procedure, we learned about APA formatting for sources, as well as how to create charts in the proper scientific format (see below).

Scientific chart

The charts we had transferred from our Excel spreadsheets, however (in this case two pie charts and two bar graphs), were unable to be viewed when uploaded to GoogleDocs. Our formatting on the scientific chart was lost as well. This project was done in practice for research papers we will have to do in our Education classes in the future, as for when we are in the field and need to write scientific papers.