The End of the Road

Well, the end is here and quite frankly I'm sad about it. I've learned so much in ITED 7200. I've never taken a full on-line course so I had to make some adjustments. However, I felt that the course was just as effective as a course that meets in the classroom.

Our last assignment for the semester was to put the finishing touches on our websites. We were to prepare our websites to be commented on by our classmates. We were to initially present our websites in live classroom like we did for our hyperlinked web pages, but Dr. Leader thought it would be better to just do comments. I've already looked at a few of my classmates pages. Sena Pike had a really nice setup about counting currency. She made the site look really inviting to her intended audience of second graders. Seth Megow's site about researching the internet was also very neat.

I've learned so much from this class. My plans are to create a personal website on Google sites just for leisure and to update this blog from time to time. Until then, take care everybody.

Assignment 11

Well, it's hard to believe that the semester is almost over. It has flown by. Even with the semester winding down, basketball season has just begun. Our ladies are currently 3-0. Not a bad start at all. Now, on to ITED 7200.

This week's assignment called for our class to create sections within our website. The process wasn't a hard one at all. Really, it was a review of many of the things we have learned over the course of the semester. We had to create at least three sections, not including the WebQuest activity that we did last week. In addition, we had to put an appropriate graphic on each page. I, and many more of my classmates, used the hyperlinked web page that I created for an earlier assignment. I basically took the sub-sections of the hyperlinked page and made those into sections on my web page. Now I believe that my web page is becoming more complete. At first I really wasn't sure of how my webpage would come out but I am really pleased.

WebQuest Activity

Back at it once again, my friends. This week's assignment was actually given to us about two weeks ago. Dr. Leader decided to give us more time to complete it since it was in depth. We learned about WebQuest activities and had to design one ourselves. WebQuest is a little different from the Big6 Model that we previously learned about. While Big6 has you find the information on your own for an activity, WebQuest actually gives you the resources to complete an activity. We were able to look on the official WebQuest site and view different activities that other educators had designed. Then it was time for us to create either a Big6 activity or a WebQuest activity.

I chose to create a WebQuest activity that dealt with basketball. Keeping with my zone defense scheme, my activity had students creating a portfolio on two different zone defenses. I pretended that they were just hired as a women's basketball graduate assistant coach at the University of Tennessee. They got to choose the two zone defenses from a list of four zone defenses. I found this activity to be very challenging and rewarding at the same time. It forced me to think outside the box, especially when putting together a rubric for the projects to be graded on. I have never done a rubric before so it took me some time to figure things out. If I were to do a WebQuest activity again, I would probably have my players research full-court presses.

Fair Use and Copyright

Man, it seems like it has been forever since I last posted! Things are getting crazy around here with basketball season starting next Saturday. Oh yeah, it's game time baby. Anywho, on to ITED 7200.

This past week's assignment taught our class a lesson on the fair use guidelines and copyrights as well as copywrongs. We were to read a couple of readings on fair use and copyrights and then take a "quiz" on what we learned. The "quiz" presented different scenarios and we had to determine if it was permissible to use whatever material the educator needed to use. Some of the answers to the scenarios were eye opening. Lots of people don't realize that some of the things they already do are actually deemed illegal.

We then had to develop our own scenarios and give answers to them. I learned one valuable lesson from this: when in doubt, ask for permission. It doesn't hurt to do that at all.

The Big6

This past week's assignment dealt with using the Big6 method for solving information problems. I was first introduced to the Big6 when I was a freshmen in high school. I'll admit that I didn't pay much attention to the method at that time. I vaugely remembered what it was about and things started to come back around to me when I read the lesson and assignment. The Big6 solves information problems by using six stages. Whether people realize it or not, they actually use different stages of the Big6 when searching for information.

For our assignment, we were to go to Big6.com and find activities that involve the Big6 that people have posted. The first activity I chose was one that used the Big6 to complete income tax returns. It was very informative as I will use this activity when I start doing my income tax returns. Since I couldn't find an activity that centered around basketball, I had to find another activity on the website as a substitute. I chose an activity that helped young students decide what socks to wear using the Big6. The author took a simple task and used the Big6 to help make a decision. If that could be done with even the simplest task then I can only imagine what else the Big6 can do.

Google Sites

I never knew that Google had so many toys to play with. Our assignment for the past week called for us to start developing our web sites for our topics. We were to create a homepage and a biography page using Google sites. When I was back in high school, I maintained a web site on Angelfire as a fan page for our high school football team. Developing my page on Angelfire was easy, but Google is much better. There are more bells and whistles to use. In a matter of 15 minutes I was able to create a homepage and biography page with a nice background and complementary text to boot. I can't wait to show off my final product.

Web Page Evaluation

This week's assignment took our class on a journey to evaluate web pages. I must say that I have done something similiar to this before without actually knowing that I was doing an evaluation. We used a check list to thoroughly evaluate two of the websites that we found for our projects. The checklist is a very in-depth one as it has you search for very specific details. For example, it calls for the researcher to see if there is any contact information for the author of the article. Many people wouldn't think to look for something like that.

My topic is a bit different because its not really an academic topic. The majority of the sites that do turn up in my searches are commercial websites. Luckily, I have gathered articles written by some well respected coaches in the game of basketball. The authors for the two websites that I choose to use for this assignment did list their contact information.

Presentations

Each of my classmates had a distinct style to how they performed their research on the internet and how they set up their hyperlinked web pages. A couple caught my eye and kept my attention for the duration of their presentations. I'll start with Carley Peterson's (my partner in crime) presentation. She did an excellent job with how she did her research. Her topic on HPV hits home. She used many different sources for her searches, some of which I hadn't even thought about going to. She opened my eyes to new ways to search. Jack Purser also did a nice job with his presentation. His topic is on something that is a bit different and it deals with his career choice. Community service is a large part of residence life and he was able to find many links on different community service organizations and projects.

Live Classroom

The more activities we do in ITED 7200, the more I continue to learn and enjoy the class even more. This week we met online in Live Classroom on WebCT. It's amazing that a class can literally meet online. We have been working on finding sources for our final class project which is a web page on a topic of our choice. On last night, we gave presentations on Live Classroom showing a hyperlinked web page of the sources we have found so far. I did not realize how easy and simple it was to export a hyperlinked web page (our Google bookmarks in this case) and edit it on a Word document. It took some time to figure how to covert the codes. However, once I found out how to do it, it was smooth sailing. From the looks of everybody's presentations, it seems that each person has been hard at work.

GEM

This week's activity called for our class to search materials on GEM (Gateway to Educational Materials) and another search using the ERIC database through EBSCO host. GEM is a pretty neat site for educators. I couldn't find anything, however, on my topic of the 2-3 zone defense in basketball. I did find some lesson plans for teaching a unit on basketball that I have told one of my friends who is currently working towards his teaching certification in PE. I found some very nice articles in ERIC about my topic, including one that I am very excited about. The article was written by a well-respected coach in the profession.

WWW Databases

Up until this lesson, I thought I pretty much knew about a lot searching on the internet. Then I realized that I have only been scratching the surface. The past week's lesson and assignment dealt with WWW databases. I use Google for the majority of my internet searches, but I didn't realize that it had a directory search. The same could be said for the Yahoo! search engine. How convenient is that! This has given me another tool to use in searching the internet not only for my project in ITED 7200, but in my every day endeavors. It gives you the ability to narrow your searches. Anything that allows me to be more efficient with my time gets my approval.

Google Bookmarks

This week's activity called for our class to explore the Google search engine and learn how to use Google bookmarks. I didn't realize how convenient Google bookmarks was until I actually started using it last night! You can view your bookmarked pages from any computer. My topic (using a 2-3 zone in basketball) is a little different so I had to various combinations to search for weg pages to bookmark. I found some very interesting sites though.

Getting started

This post is really nothing more than a test post to make sure things are rolling. I really believe that I will learn a lot from this class.