Course Reflection

My experience in IT 645 has been a wonderful learning experience to say the least. I remember reading the course requirements, course assignments, and course directions for the first time when the course first came up on Blackboard. I remember thinking to myself “what have I gotten myself into?” I told my wife that this was going to take some work, but that once I got the routine down, then it would be well worth the effort. I am glad to say that I was correct in that assessment, because this has probably been one of the most productive and creatively intriguing classes I have ever taken, and I thank you, Dr. Wang, because I have learned a WHOLE lot about computers and computer applications. This is saying a lot, because I thought I knew computers. I never knew blogger.com even existed, much less how to make a movie. This has been a wonderful experience.
I want to preface my assignment descriptions and comments by saying that each assignment was thoroughly explained by you, Dr. Wang, and I really respect and appreciate the detail you put into this course, and the way you showed examples of everything that we were to do. You are very inspiring to me, and I only wish I could be as precise and effective as a teacher in the future. Thank you.
The first thing that we were asked to do in IT 645 was to go to blogger.com and create a profile including a self introduction. This was a cool experience because part of this assignment was to learn how to write a blog and edit my blog. One thing that I enjoyed doing here was going back to Blackboard and looking at all the assignments that I would be doing on Blogger.com, and what requirements would be asked of me.
Another thing that we would be doing in our blogs was linking our blogs to all the other students’ blogs so that everyone in the class could view each other’s blogs and comment on them if necessary. We did this by posting our blog URL (which we were asked to make up) to a list in Blackboard and then linking them via Blogger.com. This also served the purpose of receiving comments from our groups of three that we would form.
We were given instructions to form groups of three, and answer questions based on text material, lectures, and podcasts. We were asked to do one question at a time in between projects, splitting the questions up between us and all the while commenting on our group members’ responses, all totaling three questions analyzed and covered each week.
My first big project was to create a flyer, which was to advertise a mid term parent/teacher meeting to discuss the students’ progress during that term. We were given a website to go to in order to find a template that we liked, and then given a set of criteria to follow, including instructions on creativity and information to be included. I will be using this criterion in the future due to it’s professionalism and the fact that the templates that I found are very professional looking and will be great advertisement tools for me to use.
My second project was to create a Progress Chart for the parents to look at in order to see how their children are doing in my class. This progress chart included individual assignments, grades, averages, charts, and graphs. These things all were used in order to illustrate the progress of each student. I will say that this TOTALLY and UNDENIABLY was the best learning tool for Microsoft Excel that I have ever had, and I look forward to using Excel in the future with ease thanks to this course. I didn’t even know that I could insert things like tables or images into an Excel document!
The next project was a quiz that we were to create using Microsoft PowerPoint. I enjoyed this a lot from a creative perspective, and I did learn how to insert music into my PowerPoint, which I didn’t previously know how to do. I thought that the music and sound effects were essential to the grade that I teach- which is the 7th grade. These kids tend to get bored a little easier than, say, high school kids or even elementary school kids. I think that the audio is crucial in order to make the PowerPoint “fun” for them, so that aspect was very important to me and to what I will do with PowerPoint in the future.
The fourth project I did was a rubric, which was used to illustrate how I assessed my PowerPoint presentation. This was an awesome project, because I was given a website to go to in order to create the rubric. I will definitely use this with my classes in the future, because it gives a wonderful visual of what I expect from them on assignments. Sometimes kids need not only verbal instructions on how the grading on an assignment will be, but also a visual instruction. This is the perfect visual instruction, and a great way for students to know what to base their work upon.
My next project was a puzzle I created using a website called APTE Puzzle Center. I liked this alot!! Nothing gets kids interested in learning like puzzles, games and the like. This was a wonderful learning experience for me, and I thank you for that. I am extremely proud to say that I use this website to make a puzzle at least once a month in my classes currently, and the kids look forward to those days big time!
Next, I used an online test generator to make a sample test for my class. I was familiar with this type of website, as I have used this before in order to construct tests. In my class, however, I have a method that I prefer to use which works for me, but this was a fun and essential project, nevertheless.
I then did a Website Evaluation and a Trackstar, which was to show parents what types of websites I was using for my class and tell what I thought of each. I liked doing these assignments, and found them to be very useful, because parents (as they should be) can be very involved with their children’s education. This is a great way for the parent to kind of have a classroom presence and see first hand what we are doing in class, even if they can’t physically be there. This also lets the parents know what my opinions were about each website used, and what I thought about each site’s usefulness.
Up next, I made a course website, complete with recourses, a personal page, and a course information page. This project will be invaluable to me for many years to come. I have ALWAYS wanted to learn how to create a website, and this was very fulfilling for me.
The last project I did was also the most fun- the movie. I absolutely loved this project and can’t wait to experiment with this over the summer in order to implement several movies next year. This project made me feel like a Hollywood director, and I enjoyed watching your podcast on this almost as much as I enjoyed doing the project itself!
This is my final course reflection, and I am very glad I took this course.

butzlaff-trackstar

This was a GREAT project to do because it made me very aware of all the resources available to me. It also provided me with an alternate and more organized way of planning lessons.

butzlaff-movie

I'd have to say that I enjoyed doing this the most. Putting effects in and transitions in allowed me to be really creative. I love music, so adding the music and narration was a blast for me to do. Putting it all together was a task, but it made me feel like a movie producer, and I loved that. This will be something very fun to do for my students.

butzlaff-test

This project was not much of a challenge for me only because I make up about two tests a week for 75 7th graders. This project, though, is a wonderful way to show parents how we as teachers are assessing their children.

butzlaff-rubric

I loved this project because it was a big challenge to come up with my own guidelines for an assignment. This project allowed my to be very analytical, and I also learned a great way to make a rubric look visually appealing and organized. Very cool.

butzlaff-puzzle

This project was really neat because I had to come up with something that was fun for the students, yet challenging enough for them to learn from. I learned that there are so many possibilities when it comes to fun activities for kids to do, and it makes me want to work even harder to be the kind of teacher that kids know they can learn from and be creative too.

butzlaff-progress chart

This was the most challenging project for me, as I didn't know much about Excel. Now I know how to insert charts, insert clip art, insert formulas, and keep and track data. Big learning experience.

butzlaff-flyer

I love making flyers because I have always played music with bands, and back before there was the internet, myspace, and facebook, the best way to advertise was to make and pass out flyers. Fun stuff!

butzlaff-quiz power point

This was a great project for breaking down assessments step by step to parents and showing them that there is definitely a method to the madness, so to speak. I love the creativity and options that PowerPoint offers.

Week 11 reflection

Week Eleven (Chapter Nine & Ten)
3. What is distance education? What types of support are critical to the success of distance education? Why?
Distance education is defined as the delivery of instruction to students who are separated from their teacher by time and/ or location. There are many ways of using distance education, and many different technologies in which a teacher can utilize in order to make distance education successful. One way that distance education can be used is if a student wants to take courses from a college located in a different state. What the student would do is sign up for an online class in which the teacher would prepare a syllabus and lesson plan, along with assessments, grading information, and resources. The possibilities are very great when it comes to distance education. No longer do the teacher and the student have to be in the same location in order to make a class setting work.
Distance education has come from something as simple as mailing text materials and using a telephone with a speakerphone on it all the way to videoconferencing and e-mailing. Communication and learning through distance education has also been done using such technologies as voice mail, fax machine, broadcast video, video cassette, radio broadcast, audiocassette, net meeting, and print materials.
Several types of support are critical to the success of distance education and they all have reasons why they are so critical. These types of support include those used for both synchronous and asynchronous courses. Synchronous courses, such as when all students and the teacher are using the same technology at the same time to interact, use supports such as a speakerphone because of its ease of use and simplicity, and the conference call, because it allows for many participants to engage in the message being given. Also, in a conference call, each member of the class can be involved from any location of their choosing. Finally, a phone bridge is a great type of support for synchronous distance education because students can call a toll free number and instantly be connected with the teacher and classmates for the lesson. This is a good support because any student can leave the lesson without disrupting others simply by hanging up and, again, learning can take place from the comforts of the students’ homes on their own telephones, and long distance rates do not apply. These are just a few supports used for synchronous distance learning. Types of support that are critical to asynchronous distance education include voice mail, because students can leave responses to assessments on the teacher’s voice mailbox as opposed to tracking down the teacher to give the response. Another support is a fax machine, where information is simply sent directly to the teacher via a fax machine. This is a good support because text or graphics can be sent both ways (teacher to student and vice verse) instantaneously. E-mail is currently the most widely used support for asynchronous distance learning, because of its ease of use and ability to include attachments, such as projects and papers, to name a few things.

Week 7 Reflection

Week 7 (Chapter 7 and 8)

What is the difference between asynchronous and synchronous communication? Name and describe the Internet communication tools that fall into each category.

When discussing the differences between asynchronous and synchronous communication, it is important to understand that they both link students to other students across the globe. Both of these types of communication are Internet based, and offer amazing communication and educational possibilities. The main difference between synchronous communication and asynchronous communication is that synchronous communication is same time and asynchronous communication is time shifted.
There are several types of asynchronous communication. These include e-mail, discussion boards, and ,mailing lists. All of these types of communication are kind of like a post and respond type of communication that does not occur simultaneously. E-mail is a type of communication tool in which an address is set up on the Internet, almost like a digital post office box. Other people, too, set up these web addresses. The communication occurs when one person sends a messege to another persons e-mail address, and vice versa. This is a great way to send personal messeges, pictures, data, or other types of media or work. The response time is very quick, and there is no reliance on telephones or personal travel. Another type of asynchronous communication is a messege board. This is a place on the internet where a person can go to post information, state opinions, or get information. The exchange of ideas and information is central to messege boards, and these boards rely on post and response. There are all types of messege boards, and sometimes you have to become a member of a messege board in order to participate. Yet another type of asynchronous communication is mailing lists. Mailing lists require that people sign up to be included on a list that recieves a certain e-mail. This is very similar to joining a church, in which everyone recieves a weekly bulliten in the mail.
There are also several types of synchronous communication. These include chats and videoconferencing. Chats are communication situation in which people get on a certain website at the same time and digitally communicate with each other via typing messeges. Chats can occur between two people or a whole group of people, depending on the type of chat “room” that a person gets involved with. Another type of this type of communication is videoconferencing, which allows people of any location in the world to talk to each other via cameras that allow all parties to see each other and communicate effectively.

Week 5 Blog

Week Five (Chapter Five & Six)
1. What is productivity software? How can it be adapted to benefit teaching and learning? What are the advantages and features of electronic spreadsheets? How do you see them as a benefit in an educational environment?
Productivity software is usually generic based business application software that educators can use and adapt for the professional and administrative tasks they must address. Examples of productivity software are basic word processing, spreadsheet, and database management software. Productivity software benefits both the teacher and the learner in several ways. It assists educators in preparing memos, letters, reports, and budgets. It also assists educators in tracking student information, computing grades, and preparing lesson plans and IEPs. The school I work for uses software like this to keep a record of student attendance as well. We use this type of software for completing lesson plans and for showing teaching strategies, as well as for showing different ways in which we as teachers intervene when a student is having problems with an objective. This is a great way to keep track of what we as teachers are covering, and how the students react to it. Productivity software is very beneficial to students, as well, in that it helps educators create creative activity worksheets and transparencies that the students enjoy and learn from. Finally, the software helps educators create grade reports and parent letters, as well as store business and parent phone numbers.
The advantages and features of electronic spreadsheets is amazing. Some features of electronic spreadsheets include the ability to do just about anything you want with statistical information of all sorts including organizing data into columns and rows, color coding data, creating graphs and charts, and calculating information via formulas. Perhaps the neatest feature of electronic spreadsheets is its ability to perform what- if analysis, which is the act of entering a set of numeric data for the purpose of displaying what the numbers would look like if certain scenarios were to happen. For example, if a principal wanted to know how a new bill would affect his or her budget. Those are just a few features of electronic spreadsheets. The advantages of these types of spreadsheets include total accuracy and the ability to be easily modified. No longer would a person have to manually check and recheck their numbers. With electronic spreadsheets, it is a safe bet that when accurate information is submitted to the spreadsheet, an accurate computation will result every time. Also, if the numbers need to be changed for some reason or something needs to be added or taken away from the data, then the possibility of that happening is 100 percent and is unbelievably easy to do. Manually modifying numbers manually is unbelievably tedious and tiring.

Week 3 Blog

Week Three (Chapter Two)
2.What is the difference between formative feedback and summative feedback?
Formative feedback occurs while both learning and instruction is going on. The Dynamic Instructional Design Model (DID) covers all of the elements that a teacher would need in order to teach a class effectively, including knowing your learners, stating your objectives, establishing the learning environment, identifying learning strategies, and identifying and selecting technologies. Formative feedback consists of the questions that the teacher asks himself/herself in order to tie these elements together and allow the teacher to adjust the lesson accordingly. During the knowing your learners portion of the model, the teacher might ask …Am I responding to all learning styles? Am I accurately depicting the students’ developmental stages? Am I correctly assessing student skill levels? During the stating your objectives portion of the model, the teacher might ask …Are my objectives targeting the performances I intended? Are my objectives stated in a format that makes it possible to accurately measure performance? Do my objectives include multiple levels of critical thinking? During the establishment of a learning environment, the teacher might ask…Is the environment nurturing and secure for all students? Does the class management system promote positive and productive interaction? Am I planning student and teacher exchanges that support and enhance learning? During the identifying learning strategies portion, questions might be… Am I addressing all the steps of the pedagogical cycle? Am I including varied teaching strategies and learning activities? Finally, during the identifying and selecting technologies step, the teacher might ask…Are the technologies I have selected appropriate to the content and pedagogy? Are the technologies and support materials readily available? The answers to these questions dictate the direction and pace of the teacher’s overall lesson and approach, and allow the teacher to more smoothly move throughout the teaching process.
Summative feedback, however, occurs AFTER the learning has taken place as opposed to during the learning process, like formative feedback does. Summative feedback consists of an overall summative evaluation that the teacher does in order to find out if all objectives were achieved. Data is also collected and considered. Questions asked during this type of feedback are…Am I identifying a method of assessment that will measure achievement of objectives? Is the data to be gathered from the assessment useful to determine necessary revisions? Are the evaluation techniques valid and reliable with reference to design? The answers to all of these questions and the analysis of the data collected help to determine if the lesson is effective for the learners.

second round of projects

For some reason I has a little trouble submitting my assignments in the formats that were assigned, but I got through it after a little trial and error. I learned some great resources for creating tests, puzzles, and links to assignments. This was a wonderful set of projects that I can use right away.

Butzlaff-flyer

Butzlaff-progress chart

Butzlaff-quiz

Projects...the experience

Hello! Just wanted to discuss my projects a little bit. I had a very good time creating my flyer, progress chart, and quiz! I knew how to make flyers, but my past experience with them has consisted of lameness in comparison with the templates that I worked with for this project. I learned the most about Excel during this series of projects. I have only used it a couple of times, but now I know about inserting graphs and tables, averaging numbers, and formatting cells and columns. I had the most fun doing my PowerPoint quiz. PowerPoint allows for alot of creativity, which is what I like anyway. Later!!

Matt's IT 645 Week 4 question response

Week 4
1. How do increasing computer power, decreasing size, and wireless communications make technology-enhanced classrooms more flexible? What is a virtual environment? What potential does it hold for education?

Increasing computer power allows for more programs to be used and for education via computers to run smoother. In addition, more power to the computer allows for increased CPU, increased RAM, and an overall better operating computer. When the computer operates faster, stores more, and runs both basic and advanced programs, then the flexibility for educational purposes becomes greater.
Decreasing sizes of computers, cell phones, digital cameras, and more into all in one handheld devices can make note taking, educational software, or using the Internet as easy as possible, thus allowing the learning to be easy and convenient. For students, handhelds can be used to track and store weather information for science, replace graphing calculators, or to view tutorials. For teachers, they can be used to store grades or to organize a calendar, just to name a few things.
Wireless networks make it easier to create a flexible learning environment uses all the networked resources. This eliminates having to set up workstations only where network connections are available. This almost allows for limitless access to the network no matter where one is located in the classroom. Of course, this all depends on how many computers are available. With the use of notebook and handheld computers, a classroom could conceivably have a bank of computers available for students to take to their desks for individual or group research. Also, the use of clickers via Wi-Fi allows students to give an instant response to the teacher for questions by way of clicking a handheld device. These responses are then displayed in graphs or charts. These devices are a wonderful way for the teacher to assess the students’ learning and for the students to have a visual means of seeing their answers.
The potential for learning and experimenting in a virtual environment is enormous. A virtual environment is a place where virtual reality hardware and software interaction takes place. Virtual reality allows students to see and interact with a three dimensional digital world via a headpiece and glove. These environments let you take realistic virtual field trips using digital images of real and imaginary places. You see these places using the headgear, and can touch objects or move objects using the glove.

Reflection question #1 for Week 2

My understanding on educational technology and its relationship with teaching and learning process.



The definition of educational technology is any media that can be used in instruction. My understanding of educational technology lies in what I’ve learned this year as a teacher, and what I read in Chapter One of our book. Reading the book was very inspiring in that it gave me a lot of wonderful ideas of ways to teach my students. In the classroom, I use a Promethean board to illustrate things that I talk to the students about. If I do a lesson on collective nouns, for example, I generally have a Promethean board lesson to accompany my lecture. This is similar to what a PowerPoint presentation would be, except the board displays more functions and there are more teaching options, such as being able to draw on the board or have the students draw or write answers on the board while I’m teaching. This board shows lessons from a website called Promethean Planet, which I access from my laptop in my classroom. The Promethean board is hooked up to my laptop, thus whatever I pull up on my computer, the students are able to see and use, even if it’s pictures or activities off of the internet. This is just a fraction of what I understand educational technology to be. More traditional types of educational media include writing on the chalkboard or using textbooks for learning.
I believe that the relationship between educational technology and teaching lies directly in the fact that students learn differently. Have many types of media at your disposal only increases the chance that each type of learning style will be covered. For example, if Susie has trouble taking notes, but is a great auditory learner, the teacher might put notes on the board and also play an audio CD of the lesson in a fun type of format. Children’s interests are also varied, and one type of media may be boring to one student, yet interesting or fascinating to another. The internet, for example, is something that most students nowadays are very interested in. However, it seems that there’s always going to be that one, two, or three students that either aren’t into it or don’t understand it. These students need an alternative in order to feel both included and fulfilled. What educators must do is have a total understanding of each student. This includes their perceived learning styles, their interests, and their educational levels. Only then can we properly utilize the educational technologies that we are afforded as teachers.
One final point on the learning process that I’d like to make is that learning is a process, and I believe that technology is a perfect way to compliment and grow that process. Technology can be very simple to use, and it can be very difficult to use. This all depends on the students ability to understand technology, but it also depends on how complicated the media that we are using is. A book is a very simple form, but computers are a bit more complicated. As students’ learning processes grow, so can the level of difficulty of the media we teach them with grow. A perfect compliment.

Intro assignment

Hi my name is Matt Butzlaff, and I am a grad student here at USM. I graduated from USM with a BA in 2007, and I'm getting my masters in Teaching. I worked for Mississippi Music until I graduated, but now I am a 7th grade Language Arts teacher at Bay Springs Middle School.I use alot of technology at my job. Daily, I use Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Outlook, a Promethean board, a Promethean slate, and many websites. I have become very familiar over the years with computers and computer programs. I am also in a band, and we designed our own artwork for our CD on a Mac. I have used Facebook chat and Yahoo messenger for personal use as well. I am really looking forward to this class and hope to learn about the possibilities that exist as it relates to using technologies for educational purposes.