Wicked Problem Project

As a child, I remember my parents asking me “What did you do in school today?”  As a parent, I ask my child the same question.  The answers I gave to my parents are similar to the answers my son gives me such as “Nothing” or “I played outside”.  This is an issue many parents face with their children every day.  How can we communicate with parents better?  Newsletters are great but they often get lost in the backpack or misplaced at home.  Over this past spring break, I had the opportunity to be a camp counselor and I ran into this same issue of a lack of parent communication.  I asked myself “How great would it be to ask parents for ideas and advice?” and “Wouldn’t it be nice to reflect on each day and inform parents of the next day’s activities?”  I was about to be a lead counselor for summer camp and I needed a solution to my problem!

So, I decided to create a summer camp website using www.weebly.com. which is free software.  On this website I included camp counselor introductions, weekly topics, a calendar, contact information, camp rules, items campers need to bring each day, and most importantly a blog.  

This was a reasonable approach because most people have access to the internet and once our Weebly page was set up it won’t be time consuming. An alternative could have been to give parents our email addresses but that’s not as interactive.

The technology I chose is weebly. It is very user-friendly which means it's more likely that parents will actually use it.  It makes the content in my problem more intellectually accessible because it allows camp counselors, parents, and campers to communicate in the digital world rather than sending several notes home or printing off a weekly newsletter.  

My pedagogical choice makes the content in my problem more intellectually accessible because when the children look at the website with their parents, they will begin to recall events that happened at camp and share their stories.  They may even think of even more stuff to talk about other than what is posted on the website.  The learning that is enhanced here is recalling and communicating.

My goal was to create a website to increase parent communication.  I was surprised that there was already a domain name for summercamp.weebly.com being used.  I guess I'm not the first person to have this idea!  That's okay though because I used supersummercamp2012.weebly.com.

I was hoping to put some pictures from last years summer camp but I didn't think about the fact that I would need permission from each of the child's parents in order to do that.  This also means that in order for me to put pictures of my campers throughout this summer, I will have to get permission to do this as well.  It is doable but definitely a "bump in the road".  Another thing I was hoping to do was monitor who can participate in the blog page.  I would have liked for it to be password protected and give parents the password but in order to do that I would have to get the Pro version of Weebly which costs money.

Luckily, I discovered that Weebly allows you to set your blog up where anytime someone tries to post a blog, it has to be approved by me before it shows up on the blog page.  

The project was implemented as planned.  By the time camp started the website was up and running.  The only problem was the Meet the Counselors page.  I was the only counselor on there! Hopefully this will be taken care of soon.

The best evidence would be parents typing in on the blog page.  There has been some verbal evidence such as parents knowing what we are doing that day ahead of time.  I had some parents know that we were going to go bowling. One parent came in and asked me "What is Neukem?" (a kid-friendly version of volleyball) and we hadn't even played it yet.

Next time I do something like this I will be sure to advertise the website way more in advance.   I would also put a form in the registration packet asking parents if their child can have their picture posted on our website. Also, I will be sure the Meet the Counselors page is completed ahead of time. This should have been taken care of before implementation.

A classmate of mine gave me some good insight about my overall success.  She basically said that once others see how successful I was this first year with my website, they will be more likely to use it next year.  I’m very satisfied with the results of my website and I’m looking forward to giving it a try in my new classroom this fall!

Super Summer Camp 2012

Professional Learning Plan

I am amazed at how much I have learned in the past six months by through Michigan State University’s Educational Technology courses.   When I started CEP 810 in January, I thought I had a fairly good amount of experience with technology when in reality I had little experience with technology. I guess I didn't realize how much the world of technology has to offer.  I have accomplished so much in the last six months and enjoyed every minute of it.

This past Friday I was offered and accepted a teaching job at Okemos Public Montessori at Central for the 2012-2013 school year.  It will be a Pre-Primer Kindergarten and Kindergarten split class.  It would be difficult for me to incorporate some of my new skills with such young children but that will not stop me from using what I can! In order to increase the use of technology in my classroom, I would like to create a class blog page as a communication tool for parents and coworkers.  I think it would be a great way to share classroom activities, announcements, notes home, questions, comments, pictures, links to videos, websites, worksheets, and more.  I would also like to start making class videos and taking more pictures to post on our blog.  Students could also post some of their class work for others to see.  I find it necessary for today’s students to have as much practice on the computer as possible.  So I would like to look into finding some resources for my kindergarten students.  I can use Google Docs to collaborate with my coworkers.  Each classroom has a web page and now I will be more prepared to make my webpage a really useful tool for my student’s parents.  I think that most of this I will be able to do on my own but I can always turn to my coworkers and fellow MSU classmates for help if I need it.

I would like to increase my skills with Prezi.  I love the program and think that it would be a great tool I could use in my classroom and with school work in the future.  I would like to connect more with TPAK.  It's a great concept and I find it necessary to relate most if not all of my lessons to.  I think that along my journey as an educator I will run in to several opportunities to use my new technological skills.  I may not be able to predict the future but I am willing to bet that I will get to use most of what I've learned in my CEP classes at some point in time in my future.

My personal plans are to complete MSU’s Master of Arts in Educational Technology program.  After this class is over, I will have earned my Educational Technology Professional (teaching) Certificate.  Next, I plan to continue my education so I can earn an NP Endorsement in Educational Technology.  I will be finished with those four classes by March, 2013.  Finally, I am going to take the last three classes needed to earn a Master of Arts in Educational Technology (MAET).  I will have this completed by August, 2013. If I need help with some of my work throughout the MAET program, I would like to be able to turn to my classmates as well as past and present professors.

Overall, I am pleased with all I have learned in MSU’s Educational Technology Professional Certificate program.  I look forward to applying what I have learned in my personal and professional future.

Group Leadership Project - Blogger

What tool did your group use to deliver the PD tutorial?  Why?

Our group chose to use the tool Blogger for our Group Leadership Project.  We chose Blogger because all of us have a blog page using Blogger and find it user friendly and we all agreed that we would like to learn more about it.

What did you learn during the development process of the final product?

During the development of our Group Leadership Project, we used Camtasia.  This was new to me and I learned the basics about how to use it.

What would you do differently if you had to develop a similar product again?

In order to split up the work, we assigned each of us a couple different topics to teach about Blogger.  We each wrote our own scripts and recorded our own parts using  Camtasia .  We then emailed our parts to Lisa who then used Screencast to put them all together.  If I did this project again, I would have had us split up the work differently.  It was a bit confusing using Camtasia the way we did.  I didn't find it to be very user friendly and I also didn't like having to download a new program on my computer.  It may have been easier to do a few Jing's, and then use Camtasia to record the Jing videos only because I think Jing is awesome and super easy to use and Camtasia can record over five minutes.  Either way, our project turned out fine and I'm satisfied with our finished project.  Not to mention I had a great group of ladies on my team and I think we all worked very well together.

Here is our Group Leadership Project Screencast...

Wicked Problem Project Part D - Findings and Implications

For my Wicked Problem Project I created a website for the summer camp I am a counselor for.  The reason I chose this was to solve the problem of lack of parent communication.  The part I was most excited about was the blog page.  Here are some comments about how the project went/is going:

The project was implemented as planned.  Camp started last week and the website was up and running.  There were a few glitches though.  The "Meet the Counselors" link is supposed to talk about all of the counselors.  I don't know the other counselors well and asked them if they would please write at least a couple sentences about themselves.  I even offered to type it in for them.  This has not happened yet.  I'm hoping this task will get accomplished by the end of next week.  Not to mention the fact that I haven't even met all of the counselors yet.  Another thing that didn't happen as planned is the blog page.  I expected parents to comment on the blog and there have not been any comments yet.

To me, the best evidence of success would be parents typing in on the blog page.  Although this has not happened yet, there has been some verbal evidence such as parents knowing what we are doing that day ahead of time.  I had some parents know that we were going to go bowling on Thursday and the only way they could have known that is from looking at the web page.  One parent came in and asked me "What is Neukem?" (a kid-friendly version of volleyball) and we hadn't even played it yet so I know their child didn't come home and tell them that they played it that day.  Another parents said to me "You graduated from Central?  So did I!"  They must have read that on the "Meet the Counselors" link.  These are only example of comments that were made to me.  I'm pretty sure that comments were made to some of the other counselors as well.  I think that these are a few examples of success in addressing the problem.

If I had an opportunity to do a similar project in the future, there would be a few things I would do differently.  First, I would advertise the website way more in advance.  Possibly put it on the camp registration information.  I would also put a form in the registration packet asking parents if their child can have their picture posted on our website.  It was disappointing when I realized I couldn't use any pictures of my campers without written permission.  I can't believe I didn't think of that ahead of time. Also, the fact that all of the counselors are not yet on the "Meet the Counselors" page is unacceptable.  This should have been taken care of before implementation and now the link is unprofessional looking.  I think that just having experienced the implementation of this project will help me with similar projects in the future.  I guess the biggest thing would be more preparation before implementation.

I think my website turned out really well so there wouldn't be a ton of things I would change except for what I already said in the above questions.  Next time I probable will not count on counting on other people to participate in the website.  If they want to help then that's great but I shouldn't let the professionalism of the website contingent on their participation.

sharing

I am going to show you how to share your blog!

Mobile Learning

This lab was especially interesting and enjoyable for me because I have a smart phone that I use for just about everything.  I am at the point where I don't know what I would do without it.  It is so useful in so many ways.  Unfortunately, schools are not very accepting of cell phone use but for good reason.  Many people, students in particular, will use their cell phones during school for non-school related reasons.  It's too bad that students are not allowed to have cell phones in school because they could be very useful for reasons like the text poles we did in this lab.  It would be nice if there was a way to monitor the use of cell phone rather than just ban them all together.  It would be a great tool for checking for understanding and I'm pretty sure students would enjoy using their phones in class.  One obvious problem is that there are students who don't have cell phones or don't have text message capabilities.  I have been in classrooms that use IPad's and it's really cool.  Once again, it's amazing what they can do.  Students love to see new technology being used and it makes them want to pay attention more.  I would love to experiment using an IPad with students.  Maybe one day I will be so lucky.

Wicked Problem Project Part C - Implimentation

I got started on my Wicked Problem Project.  My goal is to create a website for my summer camp to help communicate with parents.  The highlight of the website will be the blog page which will allow me and the other counselors to blog about each day and embed pictures of the activities and campers.  It will also give parents a chance to give feedback and share their own stories and ideas.

Surprises: I was surprised that there was already a domain name for summercamp.weebly.com being used.  I guess I'm not the first person to have this idea!  That's okay though because I used supersummercamp2012.weebly.com .

Bumps in the road:  I was hoping to put some pictures from last years summer camp but I didn't think about the fact that I would need permission from each of the child's parents in order to do that.  This also means that in order for me to put pictures of my campers throughout this summer, I will have to get permission to do this as well.  It is doable but definitely a "bump in the road".  Another thing I was hoping to do was monitor who can participate in the blog page.  I would have liked for it to be password protected and give parents the password but in order to do that I would have to get the Pro version of Weebly which costs money.

Delights:   Luckily, I discovered that Weebly allows you to set your blog up where anytime someone tries to post a blog, it has to be approved by me before it shows up on the blog page.  This option is even better than the password option because I can deny any rude comments some parents may try to make!  I was also surprised about how user friendly Weebly is.  I was able to get more accomplished than planned because it didn't take as long as I had originally anticipated.

Here is the link to a short video of what I have set up so far (there is no audio):

summer camp weebly preview


Here is a podcast of my Wicked Problem Project Part C

listen to ‘Wicked Problem Project Part C - Implementation’ on Audioboo

Group Leadership Project Part B - Storyboard & Script

Here is the link to our Group Leadership Project  Blogger Storyboard & Script

Our group chose Blogger for our Group Leadership Project.  We were able to split up the work between the four of us as follows:

Aubrey: Setting up a new account, starting a blog, and design options
Nancy: How to create a new post including title and tagging
Kimberly (me) commenting and sharing
Lisa: adding links and images

My job was to teach how to comment and share on Blogger.  There are several ways to leave comments and several different types of sharing you can do using Blogger.  You can share a single post or the entire blog page.  You can post it on Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, Google+, or email it to a friend.  You can make it so only members can comment.  I showed how to make that setting and what happens if you are not a member and you try to comment.  Our storyboard is very detailed and includes several screen shots.  I think it will make our final project go well..

We plan to use Camtasia to record our presentation.  Each of us are going to record our own parts and Lisa is going to put them all together for us.

Welcome!

This blog has been created for CEP 812 Group 2's Leadership Project.