Marking the grade

Thought I'd post an update although I'm sure none of my classmates (former, at this point) are checking this blog anymore (if they ever were). Wound up with a "B" in the class for which I set up this site. No big surprise there, too many late assignments with the attendant point deductions. An "A" in both of my other classes though! It'd have been nice to have 3 A's but considering how busy this fall semester was, between teaching down at the outdoor ed. camp and then teaching at the high school, and traveling to and fro for Ashland, I guess I have to confess that I feel pretty good to have come out as well as I did. Ashland now wants me to repeat my student teaching, a task I am loathe to do since I did it once successfully at Kent already, and since I've taught within my certification area not once but TWICE now. Not to mention that I'd be paying to do that, slaving away per other people's subjective standards, and not making any money for rent and living expenses. Garrr...

Well, here's to hoping that 2009 will be a good year!

Pinch me, am I done?

I am so relieved to finally be wrapping up this semester! I knew I was going to be in for a rough journey from the start, trying to balance the 24-hour demands of outdoor education camp with my course load, but to top it off I went right into taking over teaching for a science teacher at Wooster High School at the conclusion of camp back at the beginning of November. My background is earth science; I took over for a biology/anatomy & physiology teacher. Lots of preparation, we'll leave it at that. I was not able to maintain an "A" average in the end for my educational technology class, but it was not a total waste; I really learned some new and fascinating things throughout the course. One more class to finish off and then this semester will be a wrap. I'm looking forward to a long stretch of sleep....

Let's make a movie...

So I took over teaching duties this past week for a science teacher who just had surgery. Anatomy and Physiology, and Biology. A&P is going to be a bit of a stretch for me, but I have pretty good kids so that helps tremendously. I also have a pretty good bunch of sophomores in my biology class. Once I finish off a few projects for Ashland I should be in good shape to really devote a lot of attention to the lessons I've been left to teach my classes.

One nice thing this week is that I was able to borrow a pretty nice digital SLR and shoot some photos of a chemistry class working in the lab. I then used iMovie on my Mac to slap together a movie, complete with f/x and soundtrack, using those photos. I don't think the movie itself is all that special (it would have been nice to use some actual video footage) but I think it presents a decent picture of lab work. I don't know that I'll use iMovie much for my own teaching, but I think it will be an effective tool for allowing students to shoot videos or pictures and then put together something meaningful. Movie-making certainly is a very nice, creative outlet for kids to put together neat presentations that they can have fun with (I know it was fun for me!). Like anything else tech-related, making this movie was initially a painfully-slow learning process, but it was really exciting in the end to see what a little bit of time and effort could produce.

I don't know how long it will be available, but here is the link for my movie if anyone cares to see it: http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=83948d11f68baa8ae4a6

Until next time...

Tum, ta-Tum Tum Tum

I am FINALLY in my last week of outdoor education down in the far reaches of Richland/Ashland Counties and you better believe I'm looking forward to its end. It's challenging enough with three classes and a job, but trying to balance them with the 24-hour demands of camp has been a nightmare. For example, one does not get adequate, re-energizing sleep when a boy vomits all over a cabin at 3 a.m. and it's up to you to get the boy to the clinic, wake teachers up, comfort the kid, go clean up the mess without waking 17 other sleeping boys, and THEN try to get back to sleep and be ready to go full-bore the next day from wake-up to lights-out.

I've heard back from one other counselor so far regarding the geology PowerPoint that I put together for my EDCI 505 hypermedia assignment, and she thought it was well-done and useful. Yay! I passed it along to seven other people as well and am hoping for more feedback as far as what's good and what needs tweaking. I was late once again though getting the next assignment done for that class. Ugh, I don't know that an "A" is going to be possible for me in the class at this point but I continue to hope that the work I'm doing will contribute to the greater good of being useful to me and to others down the road.

Day late and a dollar short

Really got behind the 8-ball with my Hypermedia project. I tried to be really ambitious in creating a self-test/tutorial covering local geology for the camp where I work. Assembling all the content alone was very time-consuming, and then going through the steps of putting the non-linear presentation format together doubled the amount of time put into the final product. In the end I feel I created a useful tool for the camp's staff to use, but I was a week late in submitting the project for my class. Ugh. I can only hope that the professor will give me at least some credit for having completed it. Of course I'm now behind in the assignment that was due this past Sunday night. Sigh. Hope to have it done no later than Wednesday.

Anyway, back to the presentation. I've used PowerPoint for traditional note presentations before and hated it. I feel that drawing and writing things by hand is so much faster, and I think people feel more at ease when they see concepts or diagrams diagrammed by hand (it's much easier to copy someone's hand-drawn work, I think). So, when I give notes to classes I prefer much more traditional means, such as writing everything up on the chalkboard/whiteboard or using an overhead projector. PowerPoint, up to now, I've felt was only good for showing slideshows of pictures only. But I do have to admit that knowing now how PowerPoint can be used to create non-linear hypermedia projects is really cool! I can see now how effective these can be for making self-paced tutorials. I suppose once a person's made a few of these and has his/her own version of a standard format that this could be a very cool tool to employ in teaching, but man is it time-consuming the first time around!

One of the camp directors and several counselors have downloaded copies of my presentation, and I'm anxiously awaiting their feedback regarding how effective they think it will be as a teaching aid. I can already see areas where I can make some changes though. As it stands now, the only way to get to the tutorial slides in the file is to select wrong answers to questions on the self-quiz slides. I either need to be sure people are aware of this short-coming or go back and create some hyperlinks on the main page that will go directly to the tutorial pages. Live and learn, I guess.

Anyway, time to get cracking on my overdue next project...

Deadlines, deadlines...

Finished my Visual Learning assignment last night just under the due time. As usual, had a bunch of things demanding my attention, concern number 1 being the loss of my cellphone on Saturday night. Wouldn't you know it, after a long, fruitless search on Saturday night and again Sunday morning and afternoon, the dumb thing was found--of course, after I'd already been to Alltel and gone through the rigamarole of getting a new one. Grrrr....

Anyway, the assignment. Here it is in all its glory. I actually enjoyed checking out all the different templates on Inspiration but found some things a little frustrating. I think part of my prolem as well is that I'd much rather draw things like this out by hand. I'm sure one could become quite skilled and adept at quickly putting a graphic organizer together on the computer, but still prefer looking at someone's hand-drawn work. To me, the ability to draw something from memory is much more useful than fancy, computer-generated work. The luddite in me speaks out, I guess.

I must be insane

Well, I agreed this morning to take over for a teacher at the high school who will be having foot surgery and out of commission from mid-November until winter break. I will be responsible for one biology class and four anatomy/physiology classes. Bio should be no problem, but A/P is going to be a bit of a challenge since I've never taught it before. Balancing that with my three courses at Ashland is going to be a lot of work but I feel it can be done.

I have a pretty good concept put together for my Inspiration assignment, just need to put it into the computer now. Hoping to get that done tonight or by tomorrow at the latest. I will be working at Camp Nuhop this coming week so my spare time to get things done is about to get a little more precious. I was down there yesterday teaching some basic geology to fourth graders from the Columbus area. They were really good about seeing that the process of sedimentary rock formation and erosion is cyclical, and they had lots of fun exploring the cave at Malabar Farm and drinking real spring water straight from the ground at the Malabar Inn. Hopefully the sixth graders I'll have next week will be just as engaging!

return to civilization

More on last week...

I had a bit of excitement getting my newsletter assignment done on time for my Ed.Tech. class last Sunday. While I was putting together my newsletter in Word, the power went out due to the high winds that blew in from hurricane Ike. This was around 7 pm. The assignment was due by midnight and I'd just lost all my data since the file was saved to my hard drive. Fortunately my girlfriend did not lose power, but I did have to scramble quite a bit to get my stuff together and get over to her place. That only left me with a few hours to get my data reentered and then formatted. Got it done by 11:20 that night and got a good grade, but wow, talk about a close call!

Obviously this was a very frazzling experience, but even more frazzling for me was that I had to put off the assignment until Sunday in the first place. Between the two other courses I'm taking at Ashland plus my work schedule, I had other things all week demanding my attention. And it stinks because I do like learning how to use my computer to do new things or do things better. Hopefully this is not going to be a recurring theme for me this semester.

My electricity was only just turned back on this Saturday afternoon. Made things interesting this past week as I had a PowerPoint presentation to complete and present for another class on Wednesday. Reading by candelight each night was definitely an experience as well. Managed to get through it, but man, it really stinks when you have to use someone else's computer to do your work. Particularly when I'm a Mac person and everyone else I know is a PC person. All I have to say is that I will always shell out a few hundred bucks more just to get a computer that is reliable, easy to use, and comparatively bug-free. Even if that means social ostracization. Or having to eat Ramen noodles, mac and cheese, and cheap spaghetti. In short, you can have my Mac when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers!

Like some of my other classmates have noted on their blogs, I too am a little apprehensive about all the projects I'll have to put together for this course and my electronic portfolio. I am hoping to keep up with it all, but even more I'm hoping to pick up some useful tools along the way too.

Initial musings

Well, I guess I've officially joined the modern age fully, as if Facebook and MySpace weren't enough. It's been a challenge this week in getting anything computer-related done since I have not had electricity in my home since Sunday's gusty kiss from Texas. The name of my blog originates from the nickname a friend/fellow competitor bestowed upon my 29" racing mountain bike. ORB is how it's usually referred, which does stand for "off-road bus," which is a comment on the size of its wheels (not standard size, for you who do not mountain bike). I will be posting more stuff in the coming days, regarding life, cycling (lack-of, lately), and my coursework at Ashland (yes, I am a student once again!). Adieu for now...