Thursday 3/4/04 Reported & Photographed by Stephanie

Class Log

Today was a day filled with events that could be used in my BANNEKER CEMS action research paper. My whole day involved the use of technology. I spent my morning on a job shadow with Bass, Inc. After my job shadow, I went back to Northwest. I returned to a quite class where all my students were engaged with a palm in hand. The students were working on a tutorial that allowed students to practice balancing equations. This was the third day the students had used the Palms. I left feeling like they were really getting the concept of balancing equations. It was now time for me to go to class and learn more ways to incorporate the use of handhelds in my classroom. We spent a few minutes chatting before Tony got us started. The agenda for the day included Sketchy, Quizzler, Lesson Plan, and the game of the day. The agenda was pretty short. “Hum!?! Maybe we will get out of class early,” I thought to myself, “It’s not that I don’t find every minute of Tony’s class entertaining, but at times I feel like one of his fifth grade students.” Maybe I am worse that his fifth graders. I always want to get out of my seat and I don’t have an attention span that will last for his entire class. We started out by sharing our assignments. We were to create a Sketchy animation dealing with something in our classrooms. Jim started out with a Sketchy on the use of Fractions. Janet took advantage of Tony’s policy on doing two of any assignment. She shared a Sketchy on pitching and a Sketchy on the food pyramid. Deb shared a Sketchy how to do word problems. Her word problem was a story about her daughter saving to buy a ferret. Sheila shared a sketchy on circuits. I shared a Sketchy on how to balance equations. My Sketchy looked like a student may have created it but I assure you I was the one who created it. Randy’s animation blew us all out of the water. He did an excellent Sketchy animation on colors. Although I thought dinner would be a good thing right now, the next item on the agenda was Quizzler. Oops, I forgot to take pictures during the Sketchy sharing. I guess now would be a good time to start taking pictures. We spent a few minutes beaming Quizzler and different quizzes to each other. Most of the quizzes we received were free quizzes from pocketmobility.com. During this time, Tony shared a successful story about the use of Quizzler. Tony’s students are required to take an exam at the beginning of the year. The student’s used Quizzler to prepare for this exam. The use of Quizzler allowed students to prepare for this exam at school and at home. The students ended up with top scores. Now it was time to learn how to used Quizzler. Tony used the Elmo to show different options on Quizzler. I liked the flash card mode and the reverse questions mode. In the flash card mode student have to recall the answer rather than use multiple guess. In the reverse question mode, students are given the answer and must figure out what the question was. At this point, if we were still having difficulties, Tony told us we could download the Quizzler manual from pocketmobility.com. Sheila and Tony used Tic Tac Toe to battle out who knew their world capitols better. Tony won the battle. We aren’t sure if it is because he really knows his world capitols or if he has played it so much he knows the questions by heart. Our final use of Quizzler was to create and import our own quiz. We created a Quiz in Memo Pad and then imported it into Quizzler. Creating a quiz about ourselves This would give us practice for our assignment.. Our assignment is to create a 20-question quiz about handhelds. Of course I couldn’t get through the night without technical difficulties. I was unable to beam my quiz. I guess I will remain quiet mysterious Stephanie. Fortunately, I was able to receive quizzes. I found out about Randy’s tattoos so I thought this might be a good time to take a picture of him and one of his MANY tattoos. It was now dinnertime. It was potato soup. Unfortunately, I did not get to try the potato soup due to the meat ingredients. I did get to eat a few oatmeal cookies and Snickers to satisfy my hunger. The movie clip of the night was “Teacher Proof.” It was short cartoon that showed a humorous approach to how some teachers deal with technology. After dinner, Tony showed us two sample lesson plans. One of the lessons was on the use of Roman Numerals and the other was on sentence structure. He gave us the worksheet called Roman Numerals Exploration. The worksheet included enough information for students to work independently, if needed. For the sentence structure lesson, Tony helped develop a program called Silly Sentences. Tony asked us to come up with five words for each category. Once we did this, we created a “Silly Sentence.” One of the class favorites was “The glamorous cat ran sadly under the car.” After testing Tony’s lesson, we used the rubric to grade his lesson. This was a good time to for Tony to share expectations for our lesson. Tony ended class with an iMovie clip created by his students. It was a description on how to play Mine Field. Tony couldn’t leave us hanging like that so he beamed us the game. Back