Picture This! Assignment

Final Self Reflection

At the end of our group project, I feel that it went quite well and that we accomplished what we set out to do. We had a rocky start the first week, because we didn't quite know what we were doing and everyone had different ideas about what should be done. I think in the future we would do much better if we set up group roles and responsibilities from the beginning. If everyone knew what their role was, it would be much easier to divvy up the work fairly and without too much discussion. We did end up with different roles within the group, but it took some time to actually get that figured out and that felt like a lot of wasted time.

What I did really like about our group is that we were very efficient when we finally settled into our group roles. We did our work quickly, then came back together to go over it. We are all secondary teachers and so we didn't worry too much about how the site looked at first, we were mostly looking at making it simple and realistic for high school teachers. As we moved through the project we also made the site interactive for students. I would definitely focus on making the site user friendly for students from the get-go next time, since that makes good sense for high school.

I also learned a lot of new things about Blogger by working through this program and it makes me excited to have my students do projects on their blogs because they are so good at figuring out technology as they go. I think they will really excel at helping each other learn the technology and that will be a positive experience for them.

Reflection on Group Work

Designing a project with a group can be a very daunting task. There is not only the project to design, but you also have to take group dynamics into consideration. I think our group ended up working quite well together even though we had a rough start. Our group had a lot of strong, opinionated individuals who have strong ideas about how things should be done. Since we didn't have a cohesive idea of what we were doing, we ended up with 3 different ideas about what we were doing. I don't think this is actually a bad thing. It just makes you find ways to work within your strengths. We found that dividing up the work and working separately, then coming back together for evaluation and feedback was the most efficient way for our group to get work done. It turns out that our ideas merged pretty well in the end and we were all able to work together.

I do think that this can be a problem with groups of students as well. Anytime people care about something there are usually strong opinions associated with it. If students are working on something they love, they are much more likely to be motivated and engaged, but it may also cause more conflict if they have disagreements. This is a good real-world skill to learn as we always have to work within our schools, communities, and families.

Group Work and Project Based Learning

Last week I started a class about Project Based Learning. I had actually never heard that term before, but had an idea since I've been around teaching for awhile now. The first week was really difficult. I felt so stressed out at the end of every day that I thought I was going to explode by Friday. Throughout the week and over the weekend I tried to evaluate why the class was so stressful for me so that I could handle it better. This is a two week, three hour a day course, so there isn't much time for decompressing between classes. I think the stressful part of the class for me has been twofold - not having a good outline of what I am expected to learn, and navigating interpersonal relationships when I am also dealing with a lot of interpersonal relationship issues at home every evening as well.

I find that I need time to organize information in my mind and I need to get a general outline of what I am expected to do so that I can work efficiently. I do well with having work modeled or having examples so I can get a good idea of the big picture. I don't do well when I have to work blind because it doesn't have any real meaning for me.

What I have realized is that I need to make sure I give my students lots of modeling before I expect them to do a project.

Technology in Our Lives Today

I believe that technology is progress. It may not be perfect, but it isn't going away and we need to find the best way to use it. We need to use it to add worth to our lives instead of taking worth from our lives. In addition, as educators we should be prepared to teach our students to use technology in healthy ways.

The following slideshow is a compilation of quotes about technology that were interesting to me:



So, what are appropriate, healthy uses for technology in our time? I don't have a good, solid answer for that in each and every situation, so all I can say is that I know it when I see it. And I also know when I see technology being used in unhealthy ways.

Here are some good examples of healthy technology use that I have seen in my online life:

• Word of Mouth Bistro opened last year in Salem, Oregon in a location that has had notorious issues with businesses going under. They not only have survived, but people often wait for 20-40 minutes for a table because it is just that good. In addition to being a well-run, tasty restaurant they really did rely on word of mouth to spread their name. One of the only forms of "advertisement" they have used is an email list and a Twitter account where they advertise their daily specials. When something looks particularly mouth watering people will repost their tweet and it gets passed on that way. This is a thoroughly modern word of mouth approach and it has worked amazingly well for them. (@wordofmouthOR)
• La Capitale is another restaurant that has used social media to build their reputation. The restaurant opened a couple of years ago and has gained an amazing reputation. Most of the key players in the restaurant such as the owner/chef, bartender, hostess, etc, have their own Twitter accounts and have built relationships with other local Twitter folks. Unlike Word of Mouth who uses their account to post specials, La Capitale has just worked on building relationships with people through their accounts and then those people try out the restaurant and spread the word around town.(@kidcapitale @robdrinkenstein)
• Melina Tomson is a real estate agent in Salem who has a very active and informational blog about living in Salem, Oregon. She focuses on building a site which will draw people who are moving to the Salem area, who then contact her to help them find a home to buy. 
• Karen moved to Salem from out of state and didn't know anyone in the area. She has used Twitter to meet local people and build friendships. It also functioned as a place to share her feelings and the struggles that came along with uprooting her life and trying to start over in a new location.
• Online classes! This has allowed me to get my Master's while still working and being a self-sufficient adult. Even though online classes will never compare to face-to-face instruction for me, I think they really have their place and make life so much easier for working people who want/need to go back to school.
• The eatsalem.com blog was started because Salem had almost no online presence. There was no place to go online and find good, up-to-date, real information about restaurants in the area, so SalemMan (online alias) started it up and it is one of the most well-read blogs about Salem. After seeing the success of eatsalem.com, SalemMan started the salemites.com blog as a place to compile all Salem related blogs and websites. Neither one is particularly pretty and certainly not perfect, but they do the job of consolidating Salem related websites in one convenient place for local residents.
• Personally, Facebook allowed me to reconnect with an old friend from childhood who had moved to Kansas. We recently went on a girl's getaway trip to Arizona for a long weekend. We had been out of contact for over 6 years before that and it was through Facebook that I was able to find her phone number and reconnect.

I'm sure there are countless other instances of technology being used to enhance lives. As long as there are human beings there will always be a dark side to new inventions, but that doesn't make the whole thing a terrible idea. Yes, as Jaron Lanier says in You Are Not a Gadget (2010), online anonymity can create trolls out of people, but that doesn't mean it has to. I think a combination of changes in the technology we use, teaching online social etiquette, and changing laws governing technology would go a long way to making the future a better place for humans and technology to reside together.

Adding a Presentation to a Blog Post

One of the great things I've learned about blogging recently is how to add a presentation (PowerPoint style) to a post. I've been working with another teacher to set up a training blog for a program we are piloting.

Here is how it turned out.

One of the major problems we ran into was the fact that YouTube is blocked on our computers and so the videos we embedded didn't work on the student computers.

We made this presentation in Google Documents. Here is a little rundown on how to add it to your blog.

• When the presentation is finished click Share in the upper right hand corner
• Click on Publish/Embed
• Choose the size and slide time you want
• Copy the code that is given in the box at the bottom of the screen
• Paste the code in your post on your blog
• Tada! You have a presentation on your blog. 

Multiple Author Blogs

I've been learning a lot about multiple author blogs since I've been working with the eatsalem.com restaurant review blog. It has been a real learning experience. Running a blog with multiple authors takes a lot of organization.

What SalemMan and KandN (online names for the two people who run eatsalem.com) have done is to open the blog to all the writers, but then there is a "scheduler" who decides when the blog articles should be published.

So, as a writer, I will go into the blog, write my post, save it to drafts, and then I am finished. KandN is the scheduler, so she decides which post to publish when and sets them up on a schedule with a time for them to autopublish. I didn't even realize you could do that on blogger until I got involved with this project. You set up some time in the future that you want to publish a post, and then you just sit back and watch it publish. What I like about this feature is that you can plan ahead if you are going to be busy and you don't have long lapses in your postings.

I've really enjoyed working with eatsalem.com. It does get a little difficult to keep up with all the blogs and homework, but it is a really good learning experience and one that I hope to continue working on.