Danielle McCracken's Blog (9)

I think that Google Apps will be one of the primary tools that we use in our classroom in the next few years. As Google Apps has grown (and waged war on Office), more and more districts are using just google instead of purchasing updated versions of Office. I think that Google has some inherent advantages in that is saves to the cloud, doesn't require licenses or computer software, can be used on any computer, and can be shared with others. One very important advantage it has it is the…

When I was first introduced to this assignment of learning more about online education I was very excited. As a teacher who is not one hundred percent enthused about the schools available to her family, I immediately thought that online education might be an option for my family. I, myself have taken tons of online courses, mot with wild success. As a student that didn’t thrive in traditional education. I truly believed that full online education, building 21^st century skills…

My thoughts on VR changed as soon as I defined what is and what VR is not. I believe there is an inheriting need for VR and hand-on experiences to become global competitors within education. The biggest disadvantage I see is the constant need for training and PD for teachers and the planning time needed to learn the systems. Once we have a platform of VR systems within the school system, we can learn to manipulate them to our class’s specific needs. I don’t believe it is the students’…

This week we focused on created a digital citizenship policy for our classroom. This assignment was difficult for me because I saw the task at hand as how to teach it to my students. While teaching it, I would have had the student come up with their own policies and added where I saw fit. However, because I were in a partner situation, we agreed it would be best to form a policy and a classroom graphic with it. I think by allowing the students to generate the policy the buy in is better and…

When I started this week and read the assignment details I was quickly overwhelmed. The concept of writing my own AUP was a bit labor intensive and grew my concerns of being able to handle grad school, teaching full time, student council and FCCLA. Although I am still concerned, I was surprised how quickly this assignment came together for me.  I read over both the current districts AUP and my first districts AUP, to compare. I also reflected on how my previous district handled technology,…

Here is the link to the Jeffco Wordle.

http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/6886602/Jeffco_AUS_Policy

I also ran Cherry Creeks AUS to have something to compare

http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/6886610/Cherry_Creek_AUS

I reviewed both Cherry Creek and Jeffco's policies in preparation in writing my own AUP…

Before this week, I have used Blooms significantly in my classroom. I made it a point to put it on my wall next to my standards in addition to putting one on the wall for my students to use. When I have students design their own assignments, I ask them to reflect on where they are in the unit (or how much content have we covered and is the information they are using in their project new or old content) and challenge them to lift their assignment to the next levels. I feel that using Blooms…

This week has been intense, but a great first week. After reading extensively reading on blogs, wikis and RSS, I am still trying to wrap my mind around how I will integrate it into each of my classes. I think that having an RSS feed will make blogs and wikis a manageable task in of classroom. Because I have over 150 students some semesters having over 150 blogs and or wikis quickly becomes unmanageable. Without a place to gather the information, there is no way I would be able to read/grade…