EDUC 628-Spring-08

In response to the blog below

http://durandus.com/phaedrus/2008/04/25/duh/

 where IDEA and Ratemyprofessor.com are compared at this blog, I have to agree with Cathy Bechtel’s comment because spend some time filling out these forms also.

From the IDEA website, the following was listed as criteria of their test, shown below.

Scores Adjusted for Extraneous Influences
A number of factors have been found to influence student ratings but are beyond the instructor’s control. Adjusted scores provide a mechanism to “level the playing field” for purposes of administrative decisions. We constantly focus our research efforts at refining the process for adjusting scores (Technical Report 12, Research Report 6). At this time, the Diagnostic Form adjusts for five factors

• Student motivation to take the class regardless of who taught it
• Student work habits
• Class size
• Student effort not attributable to the instructor
• Course difficulty not attributable to the instructor

The Short Form adjusts for three factors

• Student motivation to take the class regardless of who taught it
• Student work habits
• Class size

I don’t see anything about students motivation to take a class because of who taught it, because I have actually decided between two instructors before, in the event that I had to choose 1 class- because I already had one of the instructors already.

Well, as far as my MySpace, I need to put the blogs that are here into a category, and link this blog to that space–or the other way around—somehow.  I will figure it out.

I have 12 friends, 4 of whom are in my EDUC 628 class, and most of the others are my daughter, and her friends—her circle.  I will have to say that her group of friends spend a lot of time on the site.  The update it daily with pictures, comments, their TOP friends, bulletins, their mood, and anything else that has to with letting others in their group know how they are feeling, what they like, etc.    As far as the pictures, on of Paige’s friends went to Maysville one night to take pictures of George Clooney because he premiered his movie Leatherheads there, and she had pictures of him posted that night on her MySpace. I thought that was pretty neat.

As far as me spending time there, I plan to do a final project for my other class at the beginning of next week, and then spend the rest of the remaining time during this semester on this clas, blogging, reading High -Tech Heretic, and being on–and writing about the values that I am finding out about MySpace.

I had to do a podcast for EDUC 621, and the sofware from Audacity makes it really easy—-to just record yourself and produce it.  The site is located here.

Well, after finding a tutorial on youtube to do a youtube video, I now have one.  I used Camtasia to convert a Powerpoint into a video.  It is my first one, so it is nothing spectacular—-but it’s a start.

Camtasia is located at http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp?CMP=KgoogleCStmhome.

The tutorial I found is located here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpvD7kWglR4.

And my video is located :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKvG9o1H7N0

embedding will be my next accomplishment

I think since we were all looking at this blog and there may have been some confusion—I know I was, that I would post the sharecropping clarification link here that D’arcy Norman wrote.

http://www.darcynorman.net/2008/04/21/sharecropping-clarification/

Well, today I spent a lot of time doing work for my other technology class—EDUC 621—and I did finally figure out how to do a podcast—not a vodcast.  To even use a microphone, I had to use the following Youtube tutorial –and I am glad I did.  Simple, and sad, but true.  And then I was able to use the program that I downloaded for free from Audacity to do a simple–quick audio recording.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vissxo8furo

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

I will catch up on reading and responding to everyone’s blogs tomorrow and the next day, and then start on my ethnography.

While I was studying for my EDUC 621 class this morning, I ran across this site–here that I thought some might be interested in.  I haven’t spent much time there at all, and I think it is above my head really, but I like knowing it is there, and didn’t know if others would like the site or not, so I just decided to post it.

Well, I went to an interview yesterday and told them I loved technology and that I think that learning can take place in a fun environment.

…and then I read the first 3 chapters of Clifford Stoll’s book, High-Tech Heretic. 

I was all for the cause of integrating technology as much as I could when I teach after reading Papert’s Childrens Machine and now Stoll is bringing the enthusiasm down to a slow hault.  I am still enthusiastic about technology in a classroom, but Stoll brings up some points that I should consider about literacy and being computer literate.  His example about the boy who got the colorful graph from the Internet to display the different temperature changes of the earth, yet the boy didn’t know why the rainforest had such a low temperature is a good example of knowing about something, as opposed to knowing how to display something.

 My edition of the Opening Bell, from NEA this morning had an article from the Chicago Tribune about students from China visiting a high school in Illinois.

Chinese performance troupe visits Illinois school.

The Chicago Tribune (4/18, Canfield) reports that “members of a children’s performance troupe” from China visited Naperville North High School in Illinois as part of a cultural exchange organized by the Xilin Association, “which offers Asian culture, language and art programs to promote heritage awareness among Asian descendants and cross-cultural experiences between Asian and non-Asian populations.” The troupe “toured Naperville North and spent about an hour chatting with students in Piling Chiu’s Chinese language classes after entertaining pupils…with displays of a Chinese folk dance, martial arts and magic.” Chiu explained, “I want our kids to get a firsthand experience of what school and life is like in China.” She added that the students in the troupe “have never been to an American school, so this is a very rare opportunity.” The Tribune notes that the school district “is developing a dual-language Chinese class for kindergartners beginning in 2009.”

Dr. Lowell has in the last unit of our class the following questions posted:

 5: Morals, Ethics, and Duties
Where we’ll explore the questions of
- What constitutes a system of morality?
- What is ethical? Can you be a teacher and be ethical at the same time?
- What is the duty of a culture relative to technology?
- What is the duty of Education?

And in the Phaedrus blog about the Greatness of Universities, I think that Rick Schwier is a prime example of the word ethical and what his point is in his blog A Small Reflection on the Greatness of Universities.  Rick says something compelling to me, when he says the following:

As universities redefine themselves, I hope they remember that their greatness isn’t based on how they operate, on their solvency, or the patronage of any government, private or commercial sources of funding. Rather, the soul of the university is the free expression and unfettered exploration that is part of the daily life of every professor who steps into a classroom, library, studio or laboratory. Any move to “save” a university that threatens that freedom–however insignificantly–serves to harm the very institution we all treasure.

I like what this statement says and I think it serves to fall into the idea that to preserve a university could preserve the culture of that university in some ways.