Epic Battle

Just thought I should lighten the mood from all the studious posts with this odd YouTube video... odd... Enjoy.

Exit Post

Well, I have to admit, I'm glad that yet another class is down, and it's time to enjoy a break until the Fall 2010 Semester Starts up in August. Although this class has been quite extraordinary, I may never have another class quite like this, and I'm glad for the experience. It was good getting to try to learn and teach at the same time. It's something that will probably be a continual event in my career as a Computer Science educator. I will admit that it's not been easy, but it wasn't impossible either, and I appreciate being pushed past the point where most classrooms subsist. And to tell the truth, I probably learned a whole lot more this way. The biggest thing that I learned in this class is that not all classes are the same, and because learning is not black and white, they shouldn't be. It really is something I'm going to take with me in my lesson planning, and how I want to organize the environment of my classroom, to allow my students to engage in learning, creating, inventing, and problem-solving in a manner that can allow students to be independent and follow their own interests to increase their desire and effectiveness of learning. While I think that this class should provide more than 3 credit hours upon completion, it's been a good experience altogether. Plus, I learned a lot about what current digital tools are available that I have missed out on since I had children. My future as a student and an educator has been greatly shaped by the experiences in this class. Thank you, Dr. Peirce.

My final quote for thought:

"Experience is not what happens to a man. It is what a man does with what happens to him." ~Aldous Leonard Huxley, Texts and Pretexts, 1932

TPACK

Technolgical, Pedagogical, and Content Knowledge. I had no idea what TPACK was for, so I am including it in my blog for future reference. Since I am beginning the education courses part of my degree, i haven't really done anything with pedagogy, and this was a good introduction because it emphasized the importance of integrating it with technology and content knowledge. I feel TPACK is not only important to my degree, I think it is everything to my degree: Computer Science Education.

Here is the link to my paper I created using Google Docs, answering eight important questions relating Computer Science Education to TPACK.


"You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives." ~Clay P. Bedford

Google Forms

I created this survey using "Google Forms", part of Google Docs. I created an end of semester course evaluation that can be very useful to numerous personnel involved in education. Many colleges and universities use something like this already, but not too many high schools, and I think they can reap the benefits just as easily. And I'm pretty sure that the colleges and universities aren't sharing their results with the teachers, and I think that every teacher deserves to know how they're doing.

Here is the link to my survey.

I used this website from survey monkey to help me come up with some of my ideas for my questions.


My quote for thought:
"If you don't control your mind, someone else will." ~John Allston

Jeopardy

Easy and simple to use, JeopardyLabs has given us teachers an effective and fast way to implement technology and games into our classrooms.
Create your own game, or play my game.



My quote for thought:
"Children, don't speak so coarsely," said Mr. Webster, who had a vague notion that some supervision should be exercised over his daughters' speech, and that a line should be drawn, but never knew quite when to draw it. He had allowed his daughters to use his library without restraint, and nothing is more fatal to maidenly delicacy of speech than the run of a good library. ~Robertson Davies, Tempest Tost

PhotoStory PSA

Oops! My video ran a little long. My first run through was 18 minutes! But, since then I have managed to chop it down to seven. I learned a lot about cyber-bullying that I hadn't realized was as big of an issue as what it is. I am glad that we got to put our own opinions about what can or should be done about it into a public service announcement. Even though this assignment was quite lengthy- it took me 22 hours from start to finish for a 7 minute video- I can appreciate the experience.
As far as Microsoft PhotoStory goes, I am probly not in favor of the program. While there are both pros and cons I feel the cons and the other available programs outweigh the pros of PhotoStory. What I did like was being able to see the movie unfold piece by piece, but it reminded me too much of PowerPoint. I think PowerPoint is probably more practical because you can create each new slide from scratch and import whatever content you want, whereas in PhotoStory, all of the content has to be imported.
All that being said, here is the link to my PhotoStory- Click Here!
Or watch the embedded version of my video below.

Click here to check out YouTUBE or here to get Microsoft PhotoStory for yourself.

My quote for thought:

"We expect teachers to handle teenage pregnancy, substance abuse, and the failings of the family. Then we expect them to educate our children." ~John Sculley

Motion Path

I LOVED doing the motion path. There was so much to PowerPoint that I didn't even know was there! And the stuff I had seen before I had never thought of anyway that it could be used. I am realy starting to appriciate this class more every day. I made a semi-comical totally unscientific show I called "Evolution Animation". I could use the motion path I just created in my classroom to show my students more of what PowerPoint can really do. It's really pretty neat.
So, anyway, go ahead and click the following link to check it out. Enjoy.
Evolution Animation by Trixie Devine

My quote for thought:
"Inside my empty bottle I was constructing a lighthouse while all the others were making ships." ~Charles Simic

Prezi

Prezi. Prezi is a lot different from any other type of presentation program I've used (which is probably just PowerPoint). Prezi is a lot more like a giant white-board than a slideshow. Instead of having all of the slides one after another in sequence, you can write anywhere on this gigantic board, and zoom in as far as you want to emphasize key points, or out as far as you want to give a big overview. I like the fact that you can take different frames or captured areas and make them into a motion path to view like a show (or presentation). It's a little like PowerPoint in the means that you can create a show out of your organized information, just the means of organization is the difference.
I don't know if it is better or worse than PowerPoint. I guess in some ways it is a little of both. For Better: unique, fresh, less boring, able to give significance to the main ideas and still go into details, able to let the audience know about how big of a presentation to expect, easy to use. For Worse: unable to change background colors, text colors, or text font, can't choose to hyper-link (or at least it wasn't easy to figure out- only some of my links work, and I don't know how that even happened),when you're editing and you choose to select a URL that is a hyper-link to move it or for any other reason- it opens the link every time, my screen kept changing zoom while I was working on it, and it didn't always save when I told it to.
The ISTE NETS T Standard that I feel most closely relates to the use of Prezi is 3D. "Teachers exhibit knowledge, skills, and work processes representative of an innovative professional in a global and digital society. Teachers: model and facilitate effective use of current and emerging digital tools to locate, analyze, evaluate, and use information resources to support research and learning." Using Prezi, we put together information on a subject or topic to use as an introductory to our lesson in the classroom. It would also be a good tool to introduce to students so that they could present their information on a certain school project in more innovative ways. Prezi will publish your presentation to the cloud (cloud is a word I learned from my brother for internet space) for free, and become available to others all over the world.

All that being said, here is a link to my presentation, 10 Trixie Facts. The Prezi I created was an introduction about myself. I could use this in my Computer Science Education degree to introduce students to this new technological resource, and allow them to make presentations introducing themselves to get a feel of the program. There are endless numbers of project ideas that Prezi could be used for inside and outside the classroom, so I definitely see myself using this in the future.
And here's my Prezi now!

Copy of 10 Trixie Facts on Prezi

And finally, here is the link to access the Prezi from the Fairmont ftp site: 10 Trixie Facts Prezi

My Quote for Thought:
"The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think - rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with thoughts of other men." ~Bill Beattie

Labels

The cool part of this assignment was learning how to access FSU's FTP site from my home computer. I always thought this was only for the computers at the actual school.
Learning how to manipulate the animations to create labels and buttons was also fascinating, I had never thought about that before. It would be very useful for introducing students to a topic that required memorization because we could show the picture with the labels, hide the labels, and quiz away- then when the students needed reinforcement just click the show labels button and viola! I really got a kick out of this. Anyway, here is a link to my labels PowerPoint.

Boy, this one got me. I tried to figure out why my file wasn't opening, and apparently my copy of Microsoft Office bombed right before I saved? It wouldn't let me change my file name, make any corrections, save again, or do anything in any of the Microsoft programs. I had bought the full version, and it acted like it does when a trial is up- but all of the files I recently made were corrupt. I had to remake it on my mom's computer, but since she only uses windows xp, I had to send it to my brother's computer and get on the ftp site from there. Finally finally finally, I have my file on ftp, and an internet address for it. I am giving up on Microsoft Office 2007 and getting the 2010 version this time, if it will ever let me uninstall the 2007 one. Blahhh.

My quote for thought:
"This is perhaps the most beautiful time in human history; it is really pregnant with all kinds of creative possibilities made possible by science and technology which now constitute the slave of man - if man is not enslaved by it." ~Jonas Salk

For future references, I'm including the address to the FSU FTP site here:
ftp://studentsftp.fairmontstate.edu/

Ignite

Here is my PowerPoint slide show in Ignite! format.

I did my project on Ancient Roman Bath Houses, which works well for 9-12 Historical IGO's. If you think you would like to use my slide show in your classroom, feel free to download yourself a copy. I think that teaching the students history using unconventional methods and topics will help to get the kids to become more inspired instead of bored. I am sorry to see that the animation I created to go in my PowerPoint didn't transfer to SlideShare. I had set up a cheesy hand clipart picture coming and stealing a cheesy coin clipart picture and then exiting the slide, but SlideShare I guess doesn't support animations. That's one thing I think they could improve. I wonder if it does sound?

Extravagant Roman Bath Houses

View more presentations from tangeld.

My quote for thought:
"A teacher is a compass that activates the magnets of curiosity, knowledge, and wisdom in the pupils." ~Terri Guillemets

PowerPoint #1

I created my PowerPoint Presentation on the biblical story of Noah's Ark. I believe this power point presentation can be directly associated with numerous West Virginia Kindergarten SCO's. The story of Noah's ark presents a theory of historical science, and I have categorized animals into four groups, allowing the students to get a start on thinking about animal classifications. This would probably best be used in a Christian School's Kindergarten class... And who knows? I may be there one day. I may even use my PowerPoint to teach my own children- now that I think of it, I actually am going to. My first major is in education, I have added a second major also in education, and am heavily considering adding a third- but there is so many classes I want to take and degrees I really want to get, I am having a hard time deciding what to do first.
Anyway, you can access my slide show with the following link ("Noah's Ark" in Blue), or view the embedded slide show below!

Noah’s ark

View more presentations from tangeld.

Publish your own PowerPoint using SlideShare!

My quote for thought:
"Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another." ~G.K. Chesterton

Jing Screencast

Using Jing, I created a video of how to use and apply the Alt+Tab Toggle keys. Jing is a revolutionary program that not only allows you to capture images from right off your screen and edit them and publish it to the web, it also allows you to create a video of what is going on right there on your screen, and publish that to the web, too. This has revolutionized the how-to's and the technology assistance options. Now, when someone needs an explanation, a techie can say "Hey, I'll send you this link on how to do it, now you can do it yourself!" Now they don't have to stop what they are doing to come and find you and your computer to provide simple "click here, then here, then here" instructions.
To see what I mean, check out my video on how to toggle between screens- Click Here!


If you have any questions at all about Jing, such as: how to embed?, how to link?, how to save?, etc. then access the Jing Help Center!

Well I completely failed the part about conversions. I tried to convert the swf (shock wave flash) file to an avi and to a wmv file but neither attempt was successful. I can see the importance of being able to convert your files, though. Because not every program you want to run can read every available video format; it's just not possible. So, if you want to have more universal exposure of your video, then it is indeed very important to know how to convert your files when the need comes along.

My quote for thought:
"If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger." ~Frank Lloyd Wright

Jing Image

Here is a graphic I captured using Jing. Jing is a tool that allows you to capture a picture of video right from your computer screen and share it with world through a universal website to your very own creation. I created the drawing in Google Draw, and captured the image with Jing. Then, I added text to reinforce the meaning behind the drawing, and added a nice border. This image can help students to visualize the basic meaning of a prepositional phrase in a different context (instead of just reading sentence after sentence after sentence on paper).




Here is a link to my Jing Graphic

Or click here to try out Jing for yourself!

My quote for thought:
"If the child is not learning the way you are teaching, then you must teach in the way the child learns" - Rita Dunn

Google Draw Tool

This is my first experience with Google Draw, or any on-line drawing tool for that matter. The only other drawing tool I ever used was the Paint program that comes standard on the Window's Start Menu. The on-line Google Draw Tool worked better than I had expected because it still allowed me to use the keyboard short-cuts that I was comfortable with from Paint. And I liked the wide array of per-made shapes available, and how easy it was to import a picture to my drawing. I used the upload, import, and Google image search to get the images I wanted to include in my drawing.

The ISTE NETS T standard that I feel most closely relates to this assignment would be 2a .design or adapt relevant learning experiences that incorporate digital tools and resources to promote student learning and creativity. I think that the use of Google Draw Tool was incorporating digital tools and resources, and it definitely allowed me to express my creativity while learning a new program.

Here is a link to the graphic I created.

And here is my drawing reflecting my typical computer session:


My quote for thought:
"One learns by doing a thing; for though you think you know it, you have no certainty until you try." Sophocles

Self Assessment

Well, I completed the Self Assessment Survey. I gave myself an A, lol, that sounds a little haughty to me- but I have put in a lot of work, and re-work to make sure it fit the rubric and the assessments definitions of an A. All of us attending FSU on scholarships can definately use the A, so it's really worth all the extra work the A entails. By the way, this is probably the most demanding class (time-wise) I have ever had. Ever.

My quote for thought:
"We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within themselves." ~Galileo Galilei

Glogster

I made a Glog using glogster. A glog is a graphic log- a web page created by individuals used to exhibit a particular idea or creation. Glogs could be used in a class to display an assignment with more than one platform (text, graphics, video, and audio). An example would be in English class, an assignment to compose a poem and display it artfully in the manner that would best express the meaning of the poem, including a reading (audio) of the poem or an acting out (video) of the poem or even an interpretive dance(video). The only problem I had with Glogster was that one time after previewing my page, all my information was lost and I had to recreate it- luckily the audio and video were still available. The ISTE NETS T standard I feel mostly corresponds with this assignment is (5A)- participate in local and global learning communities to explore creative applications of technology to improve student learning. We all created a GLOG introducing ourselves, and entered it onto a global learning community on the Internet (glogster). Then we were to think of new ways to incorporate the program into the classroom (by exploring creative applications-again glogster- of technology to improve student learning.

Click here to be redirected to my Glog!

My quote for thought:
"A teacher's purpose is not to create students in his own image, but to develop students who can create their own image." ~Author Unknown

Self Portrait

Well, right now, the biggest part of me is being a loving mommy. Everything else comes second, so I really wanted to the little ones to be a big part of my self portrait. So, I added some smaller heads in my paintings that roughly resembled the big head (me, lol). And also, I wanted to add something more to my painting because my life is so busy it wouldn't make sense to have a painting that didn't have a lot going on, so I added some business.

I created this portrait using Picasso Head



My quote for thought:
"Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition." ~Jacques Barzun

Learning Styles Inventory

I took the VARK questionaire that evaluated our learning style.
I came back as multimodal, and my score results were as follows:
Visual- 11
Aural- 13
Read/Write- 14
Kinesthetic- 12
I think it was a pretty accurate to say that I can use all four types of learning rather equally, to not only learn things myself, but to teach things to others. Although I could not decided whether I would be considered as using the Context Specific Approach or the Whole-Sense Approach of learning because I like to think I do both- whatever seems more relevant.

Take the quiz yourself!

My quote for thought:
"Retention is best when the learner is involved." - Edward Scannell, director, University Conference Bureau, Arizona

Snipping Tool

I have recently learned that the devastating impact the recent oil spill in the gulf has caused more nearly 100,000 wild animal deaths already- thats more than three times the previous amount of total wildlife fatalities of any other oil spill to date. I have learned there are several charities pitching in on the efforts to rescue and preserve wildlife, and I have teamed up with the Marine Mammal Center and created a charity donation website, and sent it out to my peers at Fairmont State University via campus email.

Above is an image of what is happenning to the wildlife off the coast of the gulf (I got from the Snipping Tool). I believe this picture does a good job of reinforcing teaching others about the devastation of our wildlife.

So, check out this website to donate to a valuable charity to help rescue the animals from the oil spill all along the gulf coast! Click Here

Check out this picture and more wildlife affected by the 2010 gulf oil spill at The Big Picture


My quote for thought:
"The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall; but in charity there is no excess, neither can angel or man come in danger by it." ~Francis Bacon

VoiceThread

This is another first for me. After watching the examples, and practicing commenting on my own, I have found this to be a wonderful tool. Using VoiceThread could exponentially enhance the capabilities of the learning potential in a classroom- especially in a virtual classroom, like this one. In a virtual classroom, the teacher would be better able to provide students with lessons and receive feedback from those students quickly so the teacher could address each individual issue. Or in a lecture classroom held at the school, the students could create their own VoiceThread presentations to turn in assignments that are not necessarily pen and paper assignments, and the teacher could give individual feedback, or let the classroom chip in on ideas to improve upon whatever the original VoiceThread was about, that the poster may not yet have considered. There is definitely much that can be done using this program as far as education is concerned.

Once I had decided that I should be a teacher I had never given much thought about why I wanted to do it or what would make me a good one. So, it took me all day, but I finally came up with my answer... and created a video comment. I'll try to include it on this post because I think it would make a good addition to my blog.

I believe the ISTE NETS T Standard that this assignment most closely related to was 1C, which says to "promote student reflection using collaborative tools to reveal and clarify students' conceptual understanding and thinking, planning, and creative processes." And during this project, we reflected on why we wanted to be a teacher as a group using VoiceThread (a collaborative tool), to promote a better understanding of the technological breakthroughs of the decade (specifically VoiceThread) and to brain storm new ways to use them.


Check out Voice Thread Yourself!

My quote for thought:
"The need to know the capital of Florida died when my phone learned the answer." ~Anthony Chevetta

Google Reader

OK, so this assignment was an interesting one. We were supposed to (1) read a blog, (2) subscribe to it, and (3) share something with someone.

(1) I read David Warlick's Blog - 2 cents worth. I learned alot about the usefulness of the iPad, and also where he felt it lacks. I was very curious about the iPad when I heard about it's arrival, and was glad to be able to get somebody's honest opinion about the machine. He says it doesn't compare to his Mac for creating, but it definitely is good for reading or "collecting information".

(2) So, I subscribed to his blog.

(3) And I shared some feeds from his blog with the public on my google profile.

(4) And created a google profile. Here is my profile link: Profile Link

Assignment Accomplished.

My quote for thought:
"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn." ~Alvin Toffler

Google Docs

Whew! That was an experience. I have never heard about Google Docs, and I haven't made a resume since High School! And I'm new to this whole blog thing so this was one heck of an assignment for me! It was really rewarding to have the opportunity to get to see all of these new technologies I've missed out on since having my babies! And what's more is that now I have a very valuable document that will help me for the rest of my years in education.

Without further ado, here is the link to my resume

My quote for thought:
"But an accurate definition of the self is impossible. You are more than you realize, more than you can define. And the more time you spend trying to nail down the definition, the less time you spend living right now. ... Your past is not your identity... You, living now, is your identity."--George Lawrence-Ell (The Invisible Clock)

Internet Connection Test

Here are my results!

Download Speed: 6.74 Mbps
Upload Speed: 0.27 Mbps

Run the Speakeasy test yourself!

Quote for thought:
"All of the biggest technological inventions created by man - the airplane, the automobile, the computer - says little about his intelligence, but speaks volumes about his laziness." ~Mark Kennedy

Personality Profile Part B

Being an idealist, I have already started understanding more about who I am, and I was able to pick up on the answer pretty quickly.

It helps me to know that it is not just what I am thinking but who I am that will be able to help me to be a better leader to a "class of students, group of teachers, or a cadre of principals". I think the fact that I am always on a search for wisdom and the greater meaning of things, that adults as well as children will take knowledge or advice from me considerably more seriously than a frugal thought. Also, it was nice to hear them think that with practice I could be a good public speaker. I somehow usually captivate listeners or groups of listeners, but was always too nervous to be anything more than a shoulder to cry on and a mind for advice and encouragement.

I am excited that in my choice of occupation, I will always be asked to use my imaginantion in more creative ways to encourage learning or understanding.

Take the Personality Quiz Yourself

My quote for thought:
"What the teacher is, is more important than what he teaches." ~Karl Menninger

Personality Profile Part A

The Idealist

I believe that the description of the idealist hit about every point of my personality, and what I would describe as who I am.
My best rationale for this conclusion has come from what I have learned about myself in my marriage. I am always trying to encourage spiritual growth for our family, and finding deeper meanings in whatever my husband does so much that we fight about it (because he would be considered an artisan type). I love helping others in any way that I can and am always encouraging others to look past the materialism to the meanings behind things. I have been teaching my peers and others in my community as long as I can remember, and they seem to really take to me and become inspired to actually learn from the task at hand and grow within themselves. Also, I am a "hopeless romantic" because I always seek the deeper meaning in all my relationships, and thrive on the love.

Find out about all 4 personality temperments here!

My quote for thought:
"Teaching should be full of ideas instead of stuffed with facts." ~Author Unknown

Browser Wars

A web browser is an execution based software application that allows the user to explore the world wide web. Within the browsers the user specifies a URI (uniform resource identifier) to access many files such as web pages, pictures, videos, and other sorts of information. Once the page is displayed within the web browser, there are usually different links, or hyperlinks that allow the user to navigate the world wide web more efficiently.

The current top four web browsers are: Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer 8, Google Chrome, and then Internet Explorer 7- in that order. I mostly use Internet Explorer because I do not usually keep up with this stuff, mostly I only upgrade or get a new browser if the web sites I want to access are no longer supported by my older browser. My brothers on the otherhand, were very insistent on me downloading Firefox until Chrome came about and now they favor it. They say Google is taking over the computer world... but I just go with the flow here...

The term browser war stands for "the competitions for dominance in usage share in the web browser marketplace." (wikipedia) In other words, each software application is trying to out preform the others in terms of what it can offer the users. I am not really sure why there is an ongoing war for the usage shares of the world wide web because they are all free and do not produce an income from being a web browser. Although, once you download the web browser I noticed they try and make their search engines your homepage which in turn generates ad revenues for them if you decide to use it and the rest of their associated products. Other than that I can't seem to understand why anybody cares to outdo whats already there, but I am glad they do because it keeps pushing us further and bringing more advances in society and techonology. Or maybe less advances as a society...

Discover the Browser Wars for Yourself!
And keep up to date with Who's Who in the Browser Wars

My quote for thought:
"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity." ~Albert Einstein

Blog Address Survey

So, now I am blogging about taking my blog address survey because I think the schedule said it required a post. Well, I hope the teacher was able to get my results because it didn't show up anywhere on my pages saying it was submitted.
No, I am not currently a teacher.
And my GMail address is tnx6devine@gmail.com.
I chose tnx6devine because I usually choose trixiedevine as my user-name or tangeld, but they were both taken already. That's so weird because I usually don't have any problem just using my name. Who knows. tnx6 looks like trixie if you write it down by hand and dot the n and the 6, haha. And tangeld is kind of like my initials Trixie ANGELica Devine. Cool, huh?
Um, I don't have much more to say on turning in my blog address survey, so catch y'all later.

My quote for thought:
"Give me a fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections. You can keep your sterile truth for yourself." ~Vilfredo Pareto

Blogger

Hello everyone!
My name is Trixie Devine, and I live in Elkins, WV.
I am a 22 year old mother of two beautiful bouncing baby boys, ages 20 months, and 6 months. They are my everything. I'm back in school to give them a better future than otherwise I would have been able to provide.
I am only a sophomore right now, but am majoring in Business Education, Computer Science Education, and hopefully will be able to squeeze in English Education as that is my passion.
I really want to be a teacher. I love being able to open up minds to new possibilities and new ways of thinking. I love having that special kind of relationship with people that no other profession can come close to. Teaching has been my goal my whole life and just now realized it.
As a child I was a tutor to my peers, and I taught Sunday School Classes and some various classes during VBS at the church I belonged to.
This is my first year at Fairmont. I was at WVU first with my two brothers, and then I switched to pursue my teaching degree- which Fairmont does offer a much better program, in my opinion.
Also, as you will probably find out, I tend to go on and on about things that should probably be kept short and sweet, so sorry for any inconvenience guys.

My quote for thought:

"A good teacher is like a candle - it consumes itself to light the way for others. ~Author Unknown"