CED 535 Week #1

New School Year, New Course!

We just started CED 535 this week and we will be talking about blogs, wikis, podcasts and a bunch of other tools that will harness the web for classroom use.  I'm pretty excited about what the course will have since this is something I have been trying to incorporate for years, but never really had the background or operational knowledge to do.  I'd like to get to the point where I could have a "flipped classroom" for my AP courses so that I can help the students more with problem solving and have less time that I have to lecture to my classroom.

My only worry about podcasting is trying to control the commenting.  I have had students in the past make fake Facebook and MySpace pages about me and they always start off innocent enough, but the commenting features quickly get out of hand.  I'd love to have some way to control this a little more while still giving students ownership of their own web presence.

Week #4 in CEDO 540 - Z Scores and Data Mining

This week we wrapped up our research project involving Facebook users and their Internet habits.  It was neat to do some data analysis on our survey.  You can check it out below:
https://docs.google.com/a/wolfmail.stritch.edu/document/d/1QLPxqDrAD-fiIPsR9UFQStQ2AsMF3woOFsERCY5wFeg/edit?hl=en_US

We also did some work with z-scores and talking about how you can use normal distributions to look at data.  It has been interesting to use statistics for meaningful comparisons of data.

Lastly, this week we did some predictions about what the future would look like in terms of technology.  We took a look at Bill Tancer's use of data and data mining techniques. If you are interested in this data and how scary it can be take a look at the You Tube video below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDrMajs9aiU

CEDO Week #3

This week we have done a little more practice with mean, median and mode as well as standards of deviation. We are also dipping into other measures of variance such as z-scores.  This will all culminate with our group designing and implementing a survey in which we can do some statistical analysis.  It will be interesting to implement what we have learned in the class to look at some real data.   hopefully the data will show some kind of trend, but who knows.  That is the fun of statistical analysis

Week #2 In CEDO 540

This week we took a look at measures of central tendency a bit more in depth.  We used Excel to crunch some numbers and run some formulas to pull out the mean, median, mode and standard of deviation on a host of different data.  This was a lot better than running it all by hand and reminded me of labs I did back in college.  We also took a look at a lot of vocabulary that is tied to quantitative analysis.  The most interesting stuff I found was on "Sugging" and "Frugging" where someone pretends to be conducting market research, but is really just trying to figure out the best way to turn around and get you to buy something from them almost immediately. You can read more about the practice here and I suggest you do because it is both diabolically clever and evil at the same time.

Week #1 of CEDO 540

This is the first week of CEDO 540 and I'm pretty excited.  CEDO 540 is all about Statistics and I have not had a math class in years so it feels good to be back talking about new STEM stuff.  We've been right in the beginning of the talk about statistics and how to use them so it has been fun to watch a couple of early 90's videos outlining the various ways that stats can be used.  If you feel like a fun blast from the past and learning about statistics at the same time check it out here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YsiVJFSwGo

Week #5 in CEdO530

This week we looked at how to grade multimedia projects.  This has been something that I have always had trouble with.  On one hand I have a checklist of what the students need to accomplish and if they complete those tasks they get full credit.  On the other hand I have always felt like some students who do the bare minimum are getting the same grade as students who really go above and beyond.  It has been very helpful to examine rubrics so that I can better create my grading criteria so that my grades can reflect this stratification of effort in my students.

Tomorrow I will be finishing my Pecha Kucha as over the past few days I have been doing "principle photography" with the help of a few coworkers.  I will be interested to see how it turns out and to see if my 1950's PSA feel comes through.

Week #4 in CEDO 530 - Prezi & Pecha Kucha

This week (two actually) in CEDO 530 we looked at a multitude of new tools and wrapped up our books Presentation Zen and Digitales

In the books they dealt with tying everything together to actually give the talk or tell the story.  I thought it was neat that after the previous 3 weeks of prep work we were in the "get out there and do it" stage.  Both books have excellent tips for content creation and I look forward to applying it all to my classes.

One of the new tools that we used for content creation was Prezi (http://prezi.com/).  This slick power point alternative has an easy to use interface and a very short learning curve.  I can see it as a great alternative to text heavy power points as it makes the words dance and move on the screen in a very interesting way.  You can check out my Prezi below:

How to choose a great picture on Prezi

We are also investigating Pecha Kucha on a topic of our choice.  I am killing two birds with one stone and putting together a beginning of the year presentation for the technology committee at my school. It might turn out campy and fun or it might turn out to be a mess.  We'll see how it turns out, but I really like the constraints as it gives me a great framework to create my presentation.