Journal 7: Professional Learning Network

     This is the first time that I had used the networking concept for my professional career.  It has been a wonderful learning experience by being engaged in networking for my professional growth, and I’ve learned so much by networking professionally.  

     The affinity group that I joined is Classroom 2.0.  In this affinity group are teachers that incorporate technology used into their lessons and for everything else in their classroom.  In this affinity group what I’ve been learning professional is by participating in the Classroom 2.0 LIVE presentations on Saturday night.  Where teachers get to share what technology applications or programs they’re using in the classroom that is showing student success.  During the presentations the audiences can ask questions by sharing questions on the desktop, and the audiences can engaged with each other by using the chat feature on the desktop.  I watched a presentation with Linda Rood who teaches a second/third grade combo class and she shared how she uses the iPad applications of Kidblog, Edmodo, Spelling and Brain Pop to enhance students learning experiences and students meeting individual goals.  She showed the audience on how to create an iBook and videos, and showed examples of her students work using these programs.  During the two hour live presentations I was expose to different applications and features on the iPad that I wasn’t aware that can enhance student learning and have students meet individual learning goals.  On the desktop I was interacting with teachers bouncing ideas back and forth of how else can we the applications, or what projects and activities are students can do.  By being part of the affinity group my professional development is growing because I am collaborating, learning, and engaging with other teachers of how incorporating technology in the classroom is beneficial to the students.  Using the RSS feeds has made me expand on my professional knowledge.  Through Digg Stream I was to enhance my knowledge about the Common Core Standards on how the standards will be implementing in the classroom, and how to incorporate lessons the new standards.  I am preparing for my professionally by learning and studying the new Common Core Standards, so that when I do get hired full time as a teacher I am prepare of what the standards are and how to teach the standard to my future students.

     I’ve really enjoyed using blogs in this course to complete the assignments.  This is a great way for us to express our thoughts and experiences by writing about it for our different assignments.  Also using the blog for this course is a great way to stay connected with our classmates by reading what they wrote about, and we can comment on each other page with suggestions, or ideas to enhance their original ideas.  Some of my co-workers, family, and friends have found my blog and they told me they’ve enjoyed reading what I’ve learned in this course thus far, and how I’m using technology in the course as well.  Having a blog in the classroom would be great for students to improve on writing skills, exchanging ideas with each other students, and have students would have accountability to make sure that their blog is proofread, edited, and submitted by the due day.  With students having blogs it is important for students to have privacy and to protect their identity from outsiders.  Teachers need to set up blogs to where the teacher is the only that can see their blogs in order to protect the students from outsiders.  For my personal social networking I don’t use Twitter, but I can see how using Twitter would be beneficial for my professional networking and also to be used in the classroom.  A teacher can give out an assignment for the students to find an image or video of a particular topic and the students can hash tag the following image or video to the feed.  Using Twitter could have been more effective in this class if we would have followed our classmates and been given an assignment through Twitter to see the out coming of using Twitter for the assignment.

Journal 6: Reflection of the First 5 Week

     I’ve learned so many things about html and css over the past five weeks.  With each class session and doing the book exercises gave me more of an understanding about how html and css work and function. While doing the book exercises and lab work the one thing I truly learned was to be patient while typing in HTML Elements.  I learned that one small error in your HTML element can changed the whole formation of your html page. 

     For instance if you’re missing the close tabs </> of the html elements they will continue to run until an end mark is made.  In one of the book exercises I had typed in left margin: and then provide the coding and my page wasn’t indent it to the left.  After looking over my elements I realize that the reason why my page didn’t indent because I forgotten to put a dash which it should have been left-margin:.  The hardest and frustrating thing about html and css is when I would preview the page and code links were broken which caused images not to appear.  Which meant I would have to go back and save images under jpg or gif, take the picture out of the images folder and place it in a different location, or rewrite the location of the url for the images. This happened during book exercise in Chapter 6 and Chapter 7.  To link up the exercises to our Cal Poly Account we had place all the exercises and save the work as index.html.  Well in Chapter 6 and 7 the home page was also place as an index.html which caused confusion for the links to go to other page, and for images not to appear on the screen.  I had to save Chapter 6 and 7 index page in a different name and go to the other pages linked to the exercise and change the html coding each of the pages.  My changing the html coding on each of the pages allowed my links to go to different pages, and for my images to appear on the page.  

     Another hard thing was to making sure that the html and css were coded exactly in order to have the right html page be displayed correctly.  It was so rewarding when I was able to figure out where my mistakes was and I knew how to fix my error.  It has been very rewarding seeing my process during the first five weeks up till now.  With spending time in the computer lab working on the book exercises and seeing the final html and css complete and done correctly made me feel accomplished and excited because I’m doing to these exercises successfully.  I can read or hear an html element or css element such as paragraph element, heading element, table row/column, italicize, indent, background, making sure each page starts with a !DOCTYPE html, have an open and close html and body for my page and etc. and know which elements to type into Dreamweaver without relying on notes to look up that information.  Everything that I’ve learned to this point has prepare me to start designing my webpage for the final project.

http://www.csupomona.edu/~cpeniche/ged512/book%20excerises/

http://www.csupomona.edu/~cpeniche/ged512/labs/labs.html  

Journal 5: Twitter

I’ve enjoyed using the social media such as Facebook and MySpace to stay connected with friends and family.  The fun part about these social networking sites is to creating a profile on to share with family and friends updates that are occurring with your life at this moment.  I like how on these social networking sites you can post pictures of events and posted them on your page, or even write an update by writing a status update to inform people what you’re doing.  When it comes to Twitter I don’t see the fun of having an accounting.  I think Twitter is just another way of texting messaging people, but you’re doing it on-line.  Recently, Twitter is now known as the social media sites that over uses hash tags.  For every post or even photo there has to be a hash tag next to each word to make that post or photo seems important.  With Twitter you constantly have to stay updated with tweets, and post tweets in order to stay active in the Twitter community.  I can see as why celebrities are constantly tweeting so they continue being in the spot life for their fans, and to stay current.

Having Twitter in the classroom would be beneficial in the classroom, but I believe that Twitter can be used in the middle/high schools and not in elementary schools.  At the elementary schools to stay connected with students I would have a class websites for students and parents to stay connected with me.  I also see that having Twitter in the classroom can also place stress on the teacher.  The teacher would have to be someone that is constantly checking the tweets of students on their phone or computer and would allow to have twenty-four hour access to students.  Also a teacher has to ensure that students are being protect from other harms that are on the Internet and have their accounts privates to others. 

Journal 4: Project Plan

Site title – Young Scholar After School Program

Developer – Christina Peniche

Rational or focus – The main objective of this website is to provide information to parents teachers, and administrators of the variety of programs we use in the Young Scholar After School Program that has given students growth, and success in their academics.  By visiting the site people can see why many administrators from other schools may want to establish the same program in their school, and see why this program has won awards for student success. 

Main features outline –The main features of the sites will be a Home Page, About Me Page, Read Naturally page, Sight Word Page, Blend Sound Page, and Educational Website Used Page

Content -

Home Page-Will feature information about what the Young Scholar After School Program offers to student for improving and meeting academic learning goals.  Home page will also feature the school contact information.

About Me Page- This will be a short bibliography about my academic background, and work experience in the Young Scholar After School Program. 

Read Naturally Page- This page will provide information on how using the Read Naturally Program with the use of iPod has increased students fluency and comprehension scores.  There will be an example of reading text, score charts, and recording of stories so users can see how the program is used.

Sight Word Page- This page will provide information about the K-2nd grade level sight words that students must know and meet before moving on to the next grade.

Blend Sound Page-This page will provide information about the Blend Sound program that is used for the students that are in the first and second grade to help with word recognition and pronouncing.

Educational Website Used Page- This page will provide links to the educational website the students used in the Young Scholar Program.

Target audience – Parents of students in the program, Parents that want their child to be a part of the program, and teachers/administrators from the district.

Design considerations-I want this website to be neat and organized.  On the left hand side of the page will be a navigation bar of the webpages and no matter what page you go on the web sites you can go to other pages.  Each of the pages will consist of summaries of the programs that are used in the after school program and examples of materials that the students use in order to be successful.  

Site Map

Wire Frame

Journal 3: The Case for Social Media in School

Resource: Kessler, Sarah. "The Case For Social Media in Schools." Mashable. N.p., 29 Sept. 2010. Web. 20 Oct. 2013. <http://mashable.com/2010/09/29/social-media-in-school/>.

Instagram, Facebook, MySpace, AIM, and other forms of social media sites are becoming quite popular among our students in school.  It is very unlikely that a student has never heard of any of these social media sites, they know someone that has an account, or themselves has an active account.  With the popularity of these social media sites these sites won’t be going away anytime soon.  Kessler discuss in her article of teachers using social media in their classroom and are having students show tremendous success.  Kessler stated “schools are missing out on an opportunity to incorporate learning tools the students already know how to use”. 

In the article it discusses when students are engaged in using the social media site they had better learning outcome.  In Mr. Hardy a 3^rd/4^th grade teacher he would have his students write a blog as a way to motivate his student to write.  The students that were blogging saw the blogging process as I am not just writing an assignment; other people may see this as well, so I have to make sure I don’t make any grammatical errors, or make sure my writing makes sense which encourages the students to do well on their blogs.  Kessler mentions that social media encourages collaboration instead of cliques. “Students critique and comment on each other’s assignments, work in teams to create content, and can easily access each other and the teacher with questions or to start a discussion” (Kessler, 2010).  This allows the students to interact with each other by learning from one another, and providing immediate feedback on an assignment from their classmates.  The best way to ensure that the students are safe with using social media is to make sure that teachers and parents teach them the safety of using social media in order for them to have success.

Question 1: What social media sites are available for teachers to use for their students?

Safety and privacy of the student is the main concern when having students engage in social media sites for school purpose.  You want to stay away from social media sites that are block at school.  The reason why I say that is because you want your students to have access to the site at school and at home without having any difficulties.  Teachers can use Edmodo, Edublogs, and Kidblog, and teachers can design their own Haiku website for the students to use.

Question 2: Does our GED 512 class relate to this article of using social media?

Yes, when reading this article I thought of the many ways that Dr. McGarvey has interacted the class through social media.  He has set up his own website that has lectures, articles, and assignments for use to look over and do.  We have set an account through blogger.com, where we read each other blogs and make comments on them.  We have signed up for Affinity Group and Digg Stream to stay up dated with our currently interest in education.  Last week in class we answer questions to the PowerPoint lecture through our cell phone.  Lastly, we signed up for a Twitter account, and I am looking forward to see what Dr. McGarvey is going to make us do through Twitter. 

Journal 2: Affinity Group & Digg Stream

Journal 2: Affinity Group & Digg Stream

Affinity Group

I joined the affinity group of Classroom 2.0: http://www.classroom20.com/.  I signed up for this affinity group because this group are actual teachers that are incorporate technology in their classroom.  The teachers have posted lessons plans in the discussion post of lessons that worked in their classroom, and showing that they used technology was a success for the students learning.  They’ll post these lesson plans for anyone to use and all they asked in return is reply back to them to see if the lesson well, or if we have any suggestion to make the lesson better. Also I like that teachers also post about websites and Apple applications that are used for appropriate grade levels in a variety of subject to enhance students learning.  By teacher posting this information it saves another teacher precious time and they can focus on other things that need to be done in their classroom.  Lastly, I like how this affinity group provides live stream conferences of a variety of technology, and education base conferences.  This provides me the opportunity of attending conferences of my interest from any part of the country from the comfort of my home.

Digg Stream

This was my first time ever using Digg Stream, and I must say you have to be patience when using this website.  I think is great that the website allows you to find a variety of blogs and websites of your interest that you would enjoy reading.  When I mention about being patience you have to patience when finding, or typing in your interest to ensure that is the feed you would like to read.  I typed in a variety of interest that was interesting to me such as common core standards and cyber bullying.  I had no problem finding websites and blogs about common core standards and how implement the standards in the classroom, and teach common core.  Everything thing I read was update with blogs post being within weeks old, and websites constantly updating with the newest information.  When it came to finding websites and blogs about cyber bullying there was a limited selection on the topic on the stream(three links), and outdated information from 2006.  Considering that cyber bulling is a hot topic going around in our school todays.  By being patience you have to search long and hard to make sure that the stream is providing you with the necessary information about your interest in order to become an effect educator. 

Question 1: What benefit do I gain from joining Classroom 2.0?

Besides acquiring access to lesson plans and conferences I get an opportunity to see how other teachers are preparing lessons and promoting positive student learning.  I get the opportunity to see a variety of teaching methods/styles being used to deliver a lesson and see if that style would fit my teaching styles.  This would be a time for me to take notes, so when I step into a classroom as a hire teacher I have my teaching methods down and is ready to start teaching.  Also I get to the see the reflections of the hardship being a teacher and the demand that is require from their principal or district.  I’ll get to see the reality of the hardship of the teachers before becoming a teacher.  This informs me of the hardship that are head in my career and how to become prepare for those hardships. 

Question 2: How do you share an item from Digg Reader with others?

If you want to send an item from Digg Reader with others, you can send the item through Facebook or Twitter.  When you’re reading your item click on the arrow that is pointing to right and either click on share to Facebook or share to Twitter.  Once you click on either or you simply log into your account and either have the item posted on your wall, or you can send the item to one of your friends/followers on your account.  This will be beneficial to know because when we active our Twitter accounts for this class we can share with our classmates what we’ve been reading that would interest others in the class.  

Journal 1-Chapter 1-3 Reflection

Journal #1: Getting Started Part 1

Robbins, J.N. (2012). Learning Web Design: A beginner’s guide to HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and web graphics. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, Inc.

In Chapter 1 the main emphasis of the text that the author Robbins wants the readers to gain is for the readers to have an understanding of how web pages are designed and worked, and the different software we should have on our computer to make a web site.  Robbins divides the different functions of web designs into six different categories of: Visual design, User interface and experience design, Web document and style sheet production, Scripting and programming, Content strategy, and Multimedia.  While I was reading the components of wideframe diagrams, site diagram, and storyboards and user flow charts under the category of the User interface I couldn’t help, but think of websites that I used like Yahoo, and Facebook that follows this model to make their web sites easily accessible to negative around, and use.  

In Chapter 2 the main emphasis of the text that the author Robbins want the readers to identify the difference of the Internet and the Web, the variety of functions that is used on the Internet and Web, and the HTML files that are used to display text and pictures on websites.  After reading this chapter I wasn’t even aware that an URL has three components of the protocol, the site name, and the absolute path to the document or resource.  It makes sense that the protocol of http:// would already be program in the websites, so it makes it easier for the users to get on a website, and it also save time from typing extra characters.  I couldn’t see myself typing http://www.google.com/mail every time I wanted to check my emails.  Websites have made it accessible for users to get on their site by not having users type the protocol or even the domain name of www. to get their sites.  I can just type google.com in the address bar and press enter and the website is program to get me to Google, and in the address part it will display the URL of http://www.google.com.  

In Chapter 3 the main emphasis of the text that the author Robbins wants the readers to gain is for the readers to under the big concepts of multitude of devices, web standards, progressive enhancement, responsive web design, accessibility, and site performance that any future web designer needs to know.  A section that stood out to me was the responsive web design.  I just assume that whenever I access a site whether on my computer, or phone that the site would just automatically fits on the screen.  I just learned that depending which device you used that device requires a totally different unique URL in order for that site to be display on the device you are using.  It shows that the Interaction Design, User Interface design, and User Experience now have additional responsibility of meeting goals on multiple devices in order for the user to have success on their site.

Question 1:  What are the goals of the Interaction Design, User Interface design, and User Experience design in order to make a website successful?

          The Interaction Designer goal is to make their website for their users as easy, efficient, and delightful.  The User Interface design goal is to make the navigation on the website such as using links, and menu options easy for the users to use and the users gets to the correct link they chose.  The User Experience Designer goal is to make sure that the users as an overall great experience on their website by seeking observations and interviews from the users.

Question 2: What are the four broad categories of disabilities and can these four broad categories of disabilities engage and interact with the computer?

          The first category is vision impairment.  Vision impairment are users that have low or no vision at all.  They can use the computer by having different device such as Braille displayed on the screen, screen reader, and using a browser’s text zoom function to make the text large enough to read.  The second category is mobility impairment.  Mobility impairment are users that have very limited use or no use of their hands.  They would use devices such may as a mouse and keyboards that are modified, and joysticks to navigate around the Web and type text in the address bar.  The third category is auditory impairment.  Auditory impairment are users that have very limited or no hearing at all.  They would use a device that provides them transcripts of audio of captions and tracks for any video they view on the web.  The fourth category is cognitive impairment.  Cognitive impairment are users that have difficulties with memory in reading comprehension, problem solving, and have little attention to details.  Websites would have to make the site as simple and clear for these users to use.