Frustration and happiness are a weird mix! Right now I am sitting in a coffee shop in a little town of Wray, CO trying to get my darn webquest finished. Of course on top of the the internet, is down all over town I think! My webquest is done and ready to go, but I don’t know if I will be to upload it considering I can’t get any internet access anywhere that I thought I would have. I am concerned I am going to have to drive three hours into Denver tonight to get access which would really be terrible.

On the other hand I am excited that I have a week off from kids, and this grad school class is almost done. This grad school class has been very frustrating for me at the same time it has had some rewards. I have been very frustrated at the amount of time and work I have had to put in on top of what my classmates have done. I feel like I have gone way above and beyond, but I feel like some things have had to drop by the wayside in order to meet my deadlines. I have had some success though such as conquering Dream Weaver, which was a big deal for me. I know that I have to challenge myself a little more than my classmates in this grad school class, and I feel like with Dreamweaver I did that.

Man this has been a rough couple of weeks!. It’s the main reason I have not updated this all important blog in two weeks. I hope that Mrs. McCoy won’t take off for it considering I will have ten blog entries by time I am done.

Really this has been a very frustrating time for me. School has not gone the way I wanted to at the end of this semester. I have gone to a new format with the power point’s I use in class that is very time consuming. It had pushed back everything else I wanted to do. I eventually gave the format up at the end of the semester and used the time to catch up in wrestling and grading papers.

Wrestling has been just as frustrating. I have a program that has growing pains. Two of my Varsity starters that I thought I could depend on have been out for the last month and we are having to depend on lower level kids. Its very frustrating. My team really struggles below the weight class of 135, and we have lost several duals this year because of it.

Am I in college again? I have not pulled an all nighter since college. With all of the things, that have been going on in my life it was the only way that I could get my presentation, paper, and Dremweaver site finished.

I also had to call the police last night while I was at school trying to get this stuff finished. I was sitting back in my room, when all of the sudden the siren starts going off, “ Intruder! Intruder! Leave Immediately” I raced up to the front of the school to turn the alarm off thinking that someone had accidentally set it while I was still there. When I turned it off, the Intruder Voice was till going. It took me a few calls and a few minutes to figure out that the alarm was going off on the other side of campus. I called the police thinking someone was in the building. After everything was checked out it was discovered that the alarm was faulty. It wasted an hour and a half of my time though

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Oh Goodness, I am putting myself out there. I have proposed a paperless classroom concept to my administration using blogger.com, and after talking with my department chair, I now have to put together a presentation on the concept.

Here’s how I picture the concept working. 1) Students would complete a warm up and would have to text their answer via Twitter to a account that I set up. This would embrace cell phone technology and turn its use into educational. 2) Students would then participate in a lecture discussion using power point without the computers. 3) Students would then sit down at their computer and work on the assignments given after downloading them from my website. 4) Students have to post whatever they completed that day on their blogger account for a daily check

Grading would work like this. 1) They would get a daily grade from posting what they have completed on their blogger.com account 2) They would post all completed assignments at the conclusion of the unit. 3) They would take test normally. 4) They would email photo story projects to an email account that is set up

This system has numerous advantages. 1) It allows students to work at own pace and work can be adjusted easily based on student. 2) It allows for daily checks making interventions easy. 3) It teaches kids computer skills. 4) It allows parents and special ed teachers to monitor progress

The negative is how do you fund it? It would take computer access everyday, and in schools that can be fairly difficult.

Deep Thoughts with Dave Lockhart

Man what a week! It’s been a crazy week for me here at Wheeler High School. I have had tons to do and so little time to do it. Between grad school, teaching, and the start of wrestling season I think you may have to pick me up off the floor by time Sunday night comes around.
School has been crazy in the fact that I am working on planning my World History prep considering it is my third new one in three years. I have undertaken doing these very complex power points, and they take time. Therefore, I am running very close to not being prepared to teach the class on certain days. Man its been stressful. On top of that grades were due, and our administration is making us feel out a ton of paperwork.
On the grad school front, I am taking my Saturday to knock out many of these little assignments like discussion board, webquest, and survey monkey. I still have plenty of work to do considering I have a presentation, two papers, and my Dreamweaver site to complete. I don’t know if I will ever get it all done, but hopefully it will work out.
Wrestling wise, we start practice Monday! We have put 52 kids through the hydration test and probably have 10 more to go. Along with our managers its going to put the number of kids involved with our program in the 75-80 range. That’s alot of kids lets just hope we can handle it all!

I AM.......... Genghis Khan

Genghis Khan, thats who I feel like today with Dream Weaver. At is best Dream Weaver is a hard program to understand. I feel like that I have to challenge myself which means I have to go past the basic things.
At first, it was a struggle moving things around where I wanted them. I figured out how to layer and was able to move on. Man that layering stuff is frustrating though. I hate that if you move the first thing everything moves.
Then it was on to put music and movies on the site. Unlike Iweb, its not easy. First you have to have a flash program. I downloaded Adobe’s because I thought it would be trustworthy. Nest you had to find a media convertor in all the programs that were downloaded. Then you had to figure out what file type to convert to. Then after the conversion you had to figure out how to put it into the site. It took me an hour and a half to do one page, but man I feel like Khan after doing it. Well, that was until I remembered all the work I had to do and then I felt like Marie Antoinette.

Ummmm.......GOOOD!

I think that Social Bookmarking is a great tool to use in classrooms, especially to help students navigate the World Wide Web successfully. I think it is an activity that can not only help students but can help teachers collaborate effectively, which is a huge buzz word in education today.
1. Teachers can use this site effectively as a way to limit the sites students can work on for an internet activity. Increasingly, the concern is that students will find information on the web that is inappropriate, false, biased, or a combination of all three. By starting a delicious account you can limit the sites that are appropriate and give students a web page to browse off of. This eliminates many of the problems that are part of the web with students, and it teaches students responsibility with the web.
2. The second way teachers can use it is as a way to collaborate. Teachers could use the site to bookmark information that they find viable. This could allow teachers a way to collaborate and share great resources without having the time to meet.

What You Talkin About Willis?

An interview activity is something all students should do in the opening day of class to get to know each other. I know that I do an interview activity during the first day of class and it allows students to get to know each other. I like the activity we did in class called Interview Exchange, and would love to do it in class, but I think it has two major draw backs.
1. I think the first drawback is computer use. This activity teaches great email skills, but most of us don’t have a class set of computers and it is very hard to get access to them. I have proposed moving to the paperless classroom with my assignments, and if I do I will have access to computers all the time. That would make this activity viable. If I don’t get my proposal through, obtaining computers to use is difficult, and I don’t really feel like dragging a laptop cart across the school.
2. I think the second drawback is how do we make kids participate in the listening part of the activity. You would almost have to take a grade on the kids sending the questions through email in order to do so. If I go to the paper less classroom this could be part of a daily progress grade. If I don’t have that. I am not very comfortable giving students a grade in a high school class room for listening.

Survey Monkey

Filling out the survey for Mrs. McCoy was my first personal experience with Survey Monkey. I knew about the site and what it does, but I had never personally used it until now. I think Survey Monkey can have some practical uses in class, but I think as a software its use can be more school wide than in class.
In class, I think Survey Monkey’s use comes down to two things: 1) You can use it to do assessments not tied to grades. 2) You can use it for student surveys to improve your class. I think a very practical way to use Survey Monkey would be for Pre and Post test for statistical analysis. I know in our building pre and post test have become a school wide initiative and survey monkey would allow us to do these with ease. The second way I think it can be used is to do student surveys on the class. You could have students fill out a survey at the end so you could improve the overall experience of the class.
I think the other use for Survey Monkey is school wide surveys. You can use these to survey parents, teachers, and students to provide data for the improvement of the overall school environment.

New Tricks

New Tricks, thats what I hope to learn from this class. I think that many of the things that will be taught in the class like website building and blogging, I already know how to do, but I am hoping I can pick up some new tricks to expand my horizons with these new technologies. I am also a bit of a tech nerd, so I am excited about learning new things like Dream Weaver. I may not use Dream Weaver because I will probably continue to use IWEB on my Mac Book Pro, but I may be able to learn some ways to integrate it in my class.
I think with all of these things integrating it with students can some times be difficult because of lack of computer access and time to teach the necessary skills. With that being said, I am excited to possible come up with some new ways to work around these problems.