CED0540 week 3 - Survey Monkey

As I continue through my journey through the world of statistics, we have to design, implement, and analyze a survey.  My group chose to create a survey about pets using Survey Monkey.  When designing a survey the questions are important.  The designer needs to think about the types of questions (the reason for the survey and support it), how many questions to have, and the wording.  A good survey topic can go array without these important elements.  You also need to make sure the questions have a good flow about them.  If they don’t make sense, the person providing feedback most likely won’t complete the survey.  In order to get good data the questions have to be worded well, as well as having “just the right amount of questions.”  After all these elements are in place, you need to choose your tool.  We choose Survey Monkey; it’s a free, easy, online survey tool.  Our next step will be to analyze the results.

CED0540 week 2

What is it about statistics that I just can't wrap my head around?  This course reminds me a lot of my special education courses in regards to calculating and interpreting standard deviations.  I like math and do well in it, but for some reason stats and I don't see eye to eye.  I'm really glad that the majority of our assignments this week were group work so that I have others to work through the problems with.  If I could just get my head around stats, especially the terms, I think I'd really like them (or at least I want to believe.)  The irony is that we use the stats all the time.  This week we spent more time on the central tendencies and how to calculate them, terminology, and surveys.  For my two terms I looked up market research and paid surveys.  There wasn't too much new to me for paid surveys, but I found market research interesting.  I always thought it had more to do with the product itself and marketing it, but it really has more to do with marketing the project.  Hey now I'm talking in circles - maybe I'm starting to understand stats.  :)  After I read up on marketing research, I thought no wonder people like marketing - it sounds interesting.

CED0540 week 1

This week was about stats.  The part that I find the hardest about stats is the language.  I feel like stats lingo is similar to an insurance policy – it goes around in circles.  This week we looked at the different types of stats, including the central measurements of tendencies – mean, median, and mode.  Part of our assignment was watching a video that had 9 examples of ways in which stats are used.  The reality is that on a daily basis we come across or use stats, for example surveys and polls, averages, etc.  I’ll really need to take some good notes on the statistics language.  I like math, so that part won’t be to bad.

I use stats in my classes when I collect data for assessment whether it is for grades or for some of the teams I belong on.  In education stats are used all the time by just about everyone.

CED0530 week 5

This week we put our final touches on our Pecha Kucha.  This is a time consuming project, but unlike anything I've done before.  As I continue to work on this project, I'm trying to think of some ways to use this either in the classroom or for presentations to my peers.  Any ideas?  With all this being said this really puts all of the "zen" qualities in place that we have learned thus far - pictures, minimal text, short, not reading from the slides, and story telling.  I'm curious besides voicethread, what would be some other programs that this could be creatd in?

My group is looking at iMovie and Moviemaker.  I'm looking forward to hearing about the other programs.  I know about some of them, but others I've never heard of. 

CED0530 week 4 - Delivery and Prezi

Zen presentation this week was about delivery and the next steps.  In the video Garr Reynold’s mentioned some things I already do.  He stated to practice and time yourself.  When I have to do a presentation I practice and practice while timing myself.  I do both so much that by the time I’m done I have my presentation memorized.  No, I don’t find it mechanical, because I never say it the same way twice.  I think that by rehearsing I feel I can include more of my personality in it because I have the content down.  He also mentioned Toastmasters.  I found that interesting since I have been a Toastmaster member in the past.  As a matter of fact, if I hadn’t done Toastmasters I’d never have been a teacher.  I was SO afraid to talk in front of an audience.  It still happens, but it’s better – thanks to Toastmasters.

Prezi was the tool used this week for presentations.  It’s an interesting program.  I think it could make the audience dizzy depending on how it’s used.  For me personally, I kept losing the content on the very large canvas.  I wish it had something that showed where you are (similar to video games – the small screen showing the whole track for example.)  I had to keep starting over.  For me, I think it’s a program I’ll need to use a little more before I give it a fair assessment.  I’m hoping after I read my classmates thoughts I can come up with some good ways to use Prezi in the future.  It’s an interesting program.

Now I’m working on my Pecha Kucha.  I like the concept, but I think it will be challenging.  I’m hoping I can do it justice.  I looked at some really good examples, so we’ll see where this goes. 

CED0530 week 3 - Animoto

This week we worked on Animoto.  It took me a really long time the first time around.  I uploaded pictures; then deleted a bunch of them because it stated a short video has only 12 pictures.  After all the time and work it turned out to be only "okay."  Then I decided to try and do a longer one.  I didn’t know if I would be allowed to, but to my excitement I was.  In minutes I was able to make the changes and now I really like the video.  I like it so much that my students are going to use it to describe a place (just like I did), and they’ll being doing this before the end of the year.

I REALLY like Animoto.  Now I’m thinking of all the ways I can use it.  It’s so much fun.  I’ve watched my video several times, what a geek!  My next project is going to be using some of my bald eagle pictures.  My students are fascinated with them, because I share a lot of stories with them.  I teach to underprivileged inner city students who don’t get a chance to spend time outside of the city; so I share my experiences of nature with them, through stories and pictures.  They really like the stories and will bring things up from time to time.  Animoto will only add to the stories.  

So far my favorite two assignments in this course are Animoto and Posterous.  Earlier this week I was helping a classmate edit posterous.  In doing so, I discovered quite a few features I was unaware of.  I played around with them a little, but in the interest of time I didn’t change anything.  At some point, time permitting, I want to play around and make some changes to my posterous.

Next we were introduced Pecha Kucha.  I like the idea of this, but I know it’s going to be a challenge.  The video we watched proved the point.  The presenter had a difficult time following the rules.  He was talking about slides past, talked excessively fast so he could say everything he wanted, and he ran over the time limit.  I watched a couple of other examples, I enjoyed the one on glass structures.  This will be an interesting project. 

Now I’m working on revising my presentation using the principles and elements we have learned about thus far.  Once it’s done it will be loaded into Voicethread.

CEDO530 Week 2

This week’s work took forever.  It’s now 6:30 PM on Sunday and this is all I’ve done for the past 3 days.  I can’t wait to get off the computer and put it away.  The dogs aren’t too thrilled about this computer right now either.  Maybe I put too much into it.......  Even though I'm anxious about all the time, overall I'm really enjoying this class.  I like watching all the stories in the different programs.

Voicethread was a new program for me this week.  I know we previewed it in a previous class, but this was the first time I had to actually use it.  This program allows you to add communication (text, audio, video) to a presentation.  I was really excited about the program when we discussed it in class, and I think it has a lot of potential.  In creating my voicethread, I wound up creating several copies of the same presentation.  Oops - now I have to try and figure out how to delete the extras.  I did learn, the hard way, that if you use the audio feature and try to use it for 2 pictures (meaning start on 1 and then advance to the 2^nd), when the audio is done it goes back to the 1st of the 2 pictures.  This made for a really awkward presentation – one that needs to be deleted.  Unfortunately, sometimes we learn the best from our mistakes.  Some ways I could see using this program would be with writer’s workshop.  I especially like this way of presenting for students that don’t mind reading their work aloud, but don’t want to get up in front of the room to present.  This would also be a good program for those students who are perfectionists.  By doing the work before everyone hears and sees it they will then be less anxious when doing the actual presentation.  Ooh, also good for special education students that are in inclusion classrooms for the very same reasons. 

I’m really enjoying Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds.  So far, I like his principles of making Zen like presentations.  While I like them, I think it will be more difficult to implement the principles.  It’s not just so much me making the changes, but also everyone else’s expectations of a presentation.  We almost need to move towards a presentation cultural movement.  Wouldn't it be great if everyone, myself included, did presentations like they were telling a story?

I'm having a lot of fun with Posterous.  I have to try and limit myself on the amount of pictures I'm uploading.  Posterous reminds me of the movie "Julie and Julia."  In the movie, Julie is working her way through a Julia Child's cookbook and blogging about it as she goes along.  I really like Posterous, and at the same time I’m a little nervous, and excited, about what Louis has in store for us to do with it. :)  Any ideas how this can be used with students?  How about students that don’t have access to email?