SpieceBlog

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(This posting can also be viewed here: http://spiece.net/web/presentation.php)

Introduction
The internet is an important part of the lives of today’s youth. Therefore we as adults must take it upon ourselves to make sure our children are safe. As an educator I feel as though it is my role to make sure this happens.

Rationale
I have created this Curriculum Web in order to promote Internet Safety and help with the delivery of it in my classroom. I have found that students tend to grasp the concepts when delivered in a way that best suits their learning style.

Learner
This web is geared towards middle school students in the 7th and 8th grades. The curriculum has been developed in such a way that the students will best learn at their age level. The eighth grade students will have an opportunity to great presentations as a group to best learn the material and the 7th grade student will learn about creating appropriate screennames and passwords.

Collaboration
In this Curriculum Web, I have also created a page dedicated to teachers that would like to see my rationale and planning for this Unit. They will be able to reproduce this with their students rather easily. I would like to promote this as much as possible in order to keep children safe.

Resources
I have also created a page dedicated to the links that will help parents, educators, and children to make better decision while on the internet.

Contact
As for the contact page, I wanted it to be easy for anyone who comes across my site to be able to contact me.

Site
Go ahead and check out the site: http://spiece.net/web/

The site I will be critiquing is a colleague of mine, Jennifer Brady. The URL of the site is: http://bradyjeni.googlepages.com/

Positive Comments:

I really enjoyed the color scheme. I thought the yellow background of the body was nice. The black text stood out in the body of the page.

Negative Comments:

The first thing I noticed was that I could not find the navigation of the site until I scrolled to the bottom of the page.

I was a little confused when I went to the homepage because due to the different fonts of the left and right columns, I thought they should have been links.

I also found the text to be a little big. I would suggest keeping the important information larger but the follow up info text should be smaller. This allows for more important information to stand out and for more background information to give the impression that you may not need to read it.

I found myself confused a lot due to a lot of different font changes and layout changes. On every page the layout and font styles are different. This cause confusion and the focus to be taken away from the information to be relayed.

Final Comments 

Overall, I think that there should have been more consistency between pages. The font styles and layout should be consistent and not so confusing. Also, the navigation bar really needs to be more visible. Maybe add it to the top and still leave it at the bottom as well. But I definitely think it needs to be at the top or on the left column.

I do think that the background and color scheme works well. The yellow background and black text really works together to relay the information

Video games in the classroom has been a controversial concept in the past. It is hard to decide whether there is a place for them or not. In my experience, I have used video games in my classroom. The one thing that sticks out to me as being a useful video game is a game called TyperShark from http://popcap.com/ . I have used this game on many occasions for the students who have earned some type of a reward. This is an excellent reward for them because it is a fun game and it allows the student to practice their typing and have fun while they are doing it.

Now, I can see other uses for video games in the classroom. Some games contain a storyline and some allow the students to practice their vocabulary. There are even sites that allow the instructor to create their own game for the students to play.

I believe that by completely banning video games from school we cut off a value tool for learning. I have students who cannot focus long enough to complete a math assignment but can sit still for hours playing a video game. There has to be a way to incorporate this into our lesson planning. I feel that if we don’t at least look into it we are doing our students a real disservice.

I have had some experience doing game design using on a couple of occasions. Both using PowerPoint as well as using Visual Basic.

While still an undergraduate student, I worked at a Summer Technology Camp called Camp Imagination. One course I taught was on Game Design. I taught students how to program a simple Trivia game using Visual Basic. This was a bigger task than I expected. I had never taught anything like this before that and it was quite difficult and I learned a lot from the experience.

I currently do PowerPoint games with my students in my Computer Applications class. It really shows the students a lot of the tools in PowerPoint that is there but it is definitely something fun for them. I am really looking forward to using some of the techniques I have learned from this unit and incorporate some of it into my lessons that I have already created.

I should mention that being a “tech” guy, I have been very anti-PowerPoint in the past but once I started to use PowerPoint to create storyboard and simple games it has definitely changed a lot of my thinking about PowerPoint.

I am very anxious to learn more about PowerPoint Games and Game design.

First, I would like to apologize for the late arrival of this posting. I have had some surprise emergencies this last week.

Anyhow, I would like to say that this week was an excellent week for me. I thoroughly enjoy reading about how my students think and how us as teachers tend to think. It is very interesting how the current generation of students think and process information. In our first reading about the Millennials Howe and Strauss really focus in on a lot of the stereotypes we give some of these students and really opened my eyes to things that I had been told about this generation. This unit really has opened my eyes to how students think in this generation and will definitely affect the way I interact with my students. The second reading really did a great comparison on how the “New” generation thinks and compares the way they think with the way their teachers think and gave me insight on how to come to my students when they have concerns about their learning. I get a lot of question like, “Why doesn’t Mr. ______ do this?” Being a computer teacher and someone between the gap of their generation and most of their teachers. It is very helpful and really opened my eyes to things I really didn’t see. Our third reading really opened me up to some of the terminology used and I think I consider myself to be a cuspid. I feel as though I am a constant gap between the older teachers in my district and the generation of students we area all teaching.

It is hard to pick out one thing in the reading that doesn’t describe my students. In fact, I cannot think of anything that doesn’t describe my current students. They can multi-task and they can use technology as a natural part of life. It is great to see these trates and I plan to use them more in my classes when I plan lessons and create activities for them to do.

I plan to use these readings and refer back to them as often as possible when I am having trouble with a group of students ot even if I just need some inspiration.

My name is Andrew Spiece. I am currently teaching 7th and 8th Grade Mathematics and Computer Science. I teach in a small class A school district (approx. 300 per class) in Ortonville, Michigan, called Brandon School District. Brandon School District is located approximately 20 miles south of Flint, Michigan in the northern tip of Oakland County.  One very exciting thing about my school district is that we just entered the top 1% of school districts in the nation in technology.  It all just happened this year and I am excited and overjoyed with this. The district just installed Interactive white boards in every classroom along with surround sound and digital document cameras. The district just upgraded from a 100mb network to a 10 GB network. We installed an IP Video and IP phone system. We have laptop carts in every building and are in the process of going completely wireless district wide.  I am so happy I am working there.

First Impressions of Web 2.0

Well, I have been using Web 2.0 in my life for a few years now in many different facets, everything from organizing my daily life to collaborating with teachers and students.  I was recently contacted by Google and continue to be contacted on my use Google applications to organize myself, my family, and my students. They have set up interviews with the New York Times, ABC News, and CNET.  I would have to say that Google has saved my professional life with Google Calendar, iGoogle, and Gmail. I also recently set up a Wikispace to use to collaborate over the summer with a technology committee I served on in my district. Then I realized that Google had the same setup in the Google Groups Web application.  But I had already started the Wikispace and went with. I was really impressed with its versatility. I have used a blog in my Journalism Class my first year teaching. That was an excellent experience.  Web 2.0 has been a huge part of my teaching since day 1 and I am excited to see where it goes from here.

Now, though I have used blogs in the past. I really would like to find some better and useful ways to incorporate them in the future in my Math class and Computer Science Courses.  I am having trouble finding a good useful way to incorporate this type of interaction with students in those settings. I already use Google Calendar to distribute a calendar and I use a classroom website to deliver materials and content. I want to incorporate more interaction to get kids more excited about web 2.0 in my Computer classes and to promote some interaction for students in my math classroom. (and still follow our AUP)

Here are some links to some of the stuff I am currently using:

Classroom Website –> http://mr.spiece.net/

Pre-Algebra 7 Calendar –>

http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=qb5jh384gksu71vlsn6r5ulsts%40group.calendar.google.com

http://www.iGoogle.com/

http://bmstech.wikispaces.com/

I am also involved with http://www.chalkface.com/

Well, this is a start as to some of the things I do with my students and co-workers. My main goal with using Web 2.0 is for it to make more more productive and accomplish what I have to do with the least amount of effort though not give on the effectiveness.

Thank you for listening to my ranting and I look forward to your responses.

Well, it is has been a while since I last posted and so much has happened. I am not sure where to start. But that will all have to wait for now!

I am currently enrolled in a course at Wayne State University where I will be learning all about Designing Web Tools for the Classroom. I am so exctited about this class because I have been doing quite a bit of it already and I am looking forward to learning more ways to incorporate them into the classroom setting.

That being said, my blog is turning into my IT 6140 blog for the next few months. To my loyal readers, this won’t be to disappointing because I will be learning some really cool things and I also plan to share some really interesting things I already do on here. So, stay tuned.

I am looking forward to this and I am very excited to share.

Wow, so much has happened since my last post. I don’t know where to begin. It is now the year 2007. I can’t believe how time flies.

My second school year as a teacher is going great. A few bumps here and there but that is to be expected. I have taken a new coaching venture and that is girls soccer. I am very excited about this and am having a blast working with the girls. I am also doing some cool things with the technology department in our district. Next year we plan to inplement the “Smart Classroom” in our district and I have been chosen to be a representative from our building to learn about how to use the new technology and come back to my building in order to train the staff at Brandon Middle School. Specifically, I will be representing the math department in our building. I have already come up with some cool ideas and I look forward to showing them to the math department in my building.

My graduate work is crazy and keeps me really busy. I am excited to be learning about developing instruction and incorporating technology. I think this will allow me to be a trendous asset to the training I will be giving to the math department at Brandon as well.

Well, I plan to try and keep all of you more updated in the future. Life can consume you and it is hard to prioritize when everything is important.

Well, my second year of teaching has begun and I am having an eventful year. This year has begun quite quickly and things are going great. I am teaching six different courses this year versus five courses last year. This year I am still teaching Computer Science and Mathematics but I got to add Creative Communications and Study Skills. It should be an interesting year and I am really looking forward to it.

It is the middle of the first marking period and already I find myself getting pulled from all angles. I have a record breaking 158 students this marking period and I look forward to another 120 or so new students next marking period. I am teaching a new course, creative communications, and currently prep for 4 classes a day. This should be cake till next marking period when I have 5 preps and I begin to coach the wrestling team. I am up for the challenge and look forward to doing it.

From the wrestling front, we have a new athletic coordinator at the middle school and that should be a real bonus for this year. He is an ex-wrestling coach and already he and I get along quite well. I am hoping I get enough wrestlers to hire an assistant coach this year. My predecessor has expressed interest in the job and I know that I can learn a lot from him being that he has approximately 26 years of experience coaching wrestling.

Oh yah, I almost forgot! I redesigned my classroom website check it out: http://mr.spiece.net/

I found that the kids really liked this design better than the last due to the color scheme. I still want to develop “The Feed” portion of the site and would like to add sports to the site with some feeds. Let me know if you have any suggestions.

Well, that is enough for now. Catch yah on the flip side.