EDM 310 Class for 4/27/09

Class,

Today, we will do a final reflection on the course and I will let you know if your Foliotek is complete. If you have not completed your Foliotek, done the final reflection or any other missing assignment you will have Wednesday to complete it. I will see everyone in class this afternoon.

EDM 310 Class for 4/22/09

Class,

Today, we will take care of our most of our Foliotek requirements. We now have four of five podcasts up and I am going to submit the last one today. I appreciate everyone working hard and being patient this semester. It has been a real learning experience for all of us and I look forward to using what we have learned to make this course better and better in the future. Here is what I have planned for the remainder of the semester.

4/22/09 - Foliotek Requirements (Upload 4 of 5)

4/27/09 - Final Assignment (The assignment will be the last piece of the
Foliotek requirements)

4/29/09 - Last Day of Class (Finish all requirements that have not been completed,
If you have all of your requirements done by 4/27/09
then you will not have to attend this last class
meeting)

Thanks again and I will see you in class.

EDM 310 Class for 4/20/09

Class,

Thank you all for your understanding and good wishes last week. It was a real tough week for me with my neck injury. We are almost finished with the course and we only have a few more things to do. I appreciate everyone being so wonderful this semester and working with me as we figure out what the class is about.

Today, we will do the following.

1. Talk about our Twitter blog
2. Finish our Professional Blogs
3. Start working with Foliotek

We will also use Wednesday to try and get Foliotek finished. We have to have all of our requirements for Foliotek in before the last day of class so I can assign you a grade for the course.

Thanks and I will see you today!

CLASS CANCELLED FOR TODAY 4/15/09

Class,

I will not be able to make it over there today. I have been out of work for the past two days and I will not be in again today due to my neck injury. I am seeing my specialist again today. He is aggressively treating the injury but there are lingering effects that need to be worked out and rested. I am having a difficult time functioning with this injury. Again, I apologize for any inconvenience. I will see you all on next Monday.

Thanks,
Mr. Tashbin

CLASS CANCELLED FOR TODAY 4/14/09

Class,

I have a neck injury that I sustained this weekend. I need to attend to it today and will not be able to hold class today. I apologize for any inconvenience. I will hopefully see you on Wednesday barring any complications. Check back to see the status of Wednesdays class.

Thanks,
Mr. Tashbin

EDM 310 Class for 4/8/09

Class,

First, let me say thank you for your hard work and your patience while developing your podcasts. I will let you know when they are put up so you can listen to them.

Second, Our next project is to make a professional blog that you can use for you future endeavors as a teacher. We will see some examples as well as talk about criteria for your professional blog that we need to build.

Third, We will have a blog assignment dealing with Twitter. Write a brief essay about what you learned about Twitter. Discuss your reactions to Twitter, the benefits of Twitter to a teacher that you can visualize, the negative aspects of Twitter, the use of Twitter as an individual and how likely you are to use Twitter as an individual and as a teacher. This blog will be due Monday April 13th.

Thanks again for everything and I will see you all in class.

EDM 310 Class for 4/7/09

Class,

I have finished 4 of the 5 podcasts. I need to meet with the group doing Wiki's today. I am going to give the rest of the class today off. You do not have to come to class today unless you are in the Wiki group. If you do come to class today, I can give you the finished file and let you listen to it and make sure there are no changes you would like to make before I turn in everything tomorrow. I appreciate your patience and your understanding with the podcasts. You all have been great to work with this semester. See you in class.

Thanks,
Mr. Tashbin

EDM 310 Class for 4/1/09

Class,

Today, we are finishing our podcast.

EDM 310 Class for 3/30/09

Class,

Today, we will finish the podcasts today.

See you there.

EDM 310 Class for 3/25/09

Class,

Due to some issues with Audacity, we are going to extend our deadline for the podcasts to Mondays class, 3/30/09. I also need to get pictures of your groups which I will do on Monday. Today, try and get as much of the 10 minute recording as you can and edit as much as you can. We need to be done with this project. See you in class.

Thanks,
Mr. Tashbin

EDM 310 Class for 3/23/09

Class,

I hope everyone had a great Spring Break. We will continue doing our recordings for our podcasts today and Wednesday.

ANNOUNCEMENT ON ACCESS FROM DR. STRANGE

ACCESS Lab Visit Changed to ACCESS Lab Video

Due to a variety of factors, you will not have to visit an ACCESS Lab. We will, instead, do a video which you will watch. I will do a visit to the Daphne Lab, conduct several interviews, and create an ACCESS Lab video tape. You will be expected to watch it during the time you have set aside to make a visit to an ACCESS lab. The video will be available by April 15.

See you in class.

EDM 310 Class for 3/11/09

Class,

I talked to Dr. Strange and he wants our podcasts to be at least 10 minutes. So, I am extending the podcast time frame until March 25th. We will continue to work on the recordings this week and the week after Spring Break. I would like for us to listen to our classmates before I turn them into Dr. Strange and make some constructive comments to help one another. We will learn about PODBEAN tomorrow from another Online Learning Lab worker and continue with our podcast recordings. I look forward to the ending products. See you in class.

Mr. Tashbin

EDM 310 Class for 3/9/09

Class,

Today, we will record our podcasts using what we learned in Audacity last week.

EDM 310 Class for 3/2/09

Class,

Today, we will work on our scripts for our podcasts. I have looked over your podcast topic requests and I have something that looks like this for groups. So far, I have been successful in putting everyone in a group with their first choice of topic. We were missing a few people last week and we will need to try and get them into groups. I have decided to make groups of three for the podcasts. You and your group will have the entire class period today to work on obtaining some facts for your script. On Wednesday, we will have a guest speaker, Jenelle O , come in and show you how to record MP3 files using Audacity. Let me know if you have any questions.

The groups look like this so far -

Group 1 - 9. Can YouTube be used as an educational tube? A discussion.

1. Cynthia Burnette
2. Jaclyn Hendrix
3. Tyler Smith

Group 2 - 1. My experiences with Blogging and how it could be useful to me as a teacher.

1. Katrice Hawkins
2. Kathy McAuliffe
3. Jennifer Williams

Group 3 - 8. Can Facebook be used as an educational tool? A discussion.

1. Brittany Canaan
2. Kayland Lamar
3.

Group 4 - Misc. Can Gaming be used as an educational tool? A discussion.

1. Chris Chambers
2. Caleb Scott
3.

Group 5 - 19. What I learned from “The Last Lecture of Randy Pausch.”

1. Heather Pearman
2.
3.

Group 6 - 33. Wikipedia. What are the positives and negatives of Wikipedia? Can Wikipedia be useful to students and educators? How and under what circumstances?

1. Rennard Lambert
2.
3.

We have one more student in the class and we might have to make a group of 4.

Think about it and I will see you in class.

EDM 310 Class for 2/25/09

Class,

Today we will start talking about Podcasts.

1. We need to start thinking about the topics and groups.

2. The link to the right has the blog topics.

3. We will begin writing scripts next Monday.

4. We will have a guest presenter the next two Wednesdays to talk about Audacity
and PodBean.

5. Also, continue to listen to the podcasts on iTunes for examples.

NO CLASS ON MONDAY FEB. 23rd

Reminder that we will not have class on Monday Feb. 23rd. Your eventual ACCESS visits will take the place of this missed class day. Have a great Mardi Gras Holiday and I will see everyone next Wednesday Feb. 25th. Also, thanks to everyone who took the survey for my colleague. I appreciate you helping her with her research.

EDM 310 Class for 2/18/09

Class,

I have a colleague that is doing a survey for a dissertation and she wants to use the EDM 310 classes. The survey takes about 50 minutes. Because I am a doctoral student and would need the help of my colleagues in the future I would really appreciate if you would all come and do the survey. You are not obligated to take the survey and it will in no way affect your grade in the course. If you wish to not participate in the survey you have that option.

Thank you

EDM 310 Class for 2/16/09

Class,

Today we will do the following:

1. Discuss the blogs you found for the domestic and international K-12 environment.

2. Talk about Google Spreadsheet.

3. We are still waiting on the Podcast information and will try and get started with it after Mardi Gras.

4. Also, a reminder that due to our eventual ACCESS lab visits we will not have class on Monday February 23rd.

3. The blog assignment for the next week will be the following:

This assignment is designed to familiarize you with different approaches that are taken to podcasts.

It is in 4 parts. What I want you to do is to listen to about 10 minutes or so of each of these podcasts and to think about how they are done. Write up your notes and post them to your blog in at least 4 substantive paragraphs.

I have selected 6 podcasts. If you wish to substitute others, you may do
so. If you do make substitutions, make clear what they are and where they can be found.

SmartBoard Lessons Podcast
KidCast
ConnectLearning One of these Episodes 90, 91, 92 (unnumbered), or 96
EdTechtalk
MacBreak Weekly
This Week in Photography

Here is how to find and use the Podcasts:
I strongly suggest that you subscribe to the podcasts you will listen to. When you subscribe to a podcast the audio is downloaded to your computer. This enables you to use the “scrub” bar on the audio track to quickly move to various parts of the podcast. It takes a minute or two to download the audio file but it is much easier to use after it is downloaded. You can always throw it away (and the subscription) in iTunes. Just select it and hit delete on the Mac or Backspace on
a windows device.

Open iTunes
Click on iTunes Store
For the first four in the list above, under iTunesStore click on Education. Then under More Education click on K-12.

In the big middle panel you will find an icon for SmartBoard Lessons.
Click on it. The remaining four can be found (in order) under Listeners Also Subscribed To. So go to SmartBoard lessons, dabble around and listen for at least 10 minutes. Remember that you can move the “player head” anywhere you want so that you can move around in the podcast quite easily. Then go to KidCast. Do the same. Then go to Connect Learning. Do the same. Then go to EdTechTalk. After you have finished with the Education Podcasts, in the upper right search for MacBreak Weekly. Listen to the podcast (again, move around in it to get a a flavor how it is
done. Then search for This Week in Photography. Do the same. You MUST listen to these
Podcasts so that you can be a better Podcaster yourself. If you are not doing a Podcast you will have a better understanding of how podcasts are done.

This blog will be due by Monday March 2nd.

EDM 310 Class for 2/11/09

Class,

I wanted to first thank everyone who went on Monday and say that everything went great. I am looking forward to the presentations today. The following people will present today.

Canaan, Brittany M.
Chambers, Christopher A.
Childers, Mallory G.
Dumas, James R.
Hawkins, Katrice A.
Hendrix, Jaclyn E.
Jackson, Whitney L.
Jinks, Brittany N.
Jones, Thelma E.
Roe, Julia W.

Also, There will not be a blog assignment today. On Monday, we will finish any presentations we do not get to today and we will discuss the blog assignment about blogs you have found in the K-12 environment domestically and internationally. We will also address a new topic (yet to be determined) then. See you in class.

EDM 310 Class for 2/9/09

Class,

Today we will begin our Google presentations. These people will go today.

Jones, Thelma E.
Lamar, Kayland T.
Lambert, Rennard G.
McAuliffe, Kathy J.
Pearman, Heather G.
Roe, Julia W.
Scott, Caleb M.
Smith, Tyler T.


Also, there is no blog assigned for Wednesday.

EDM 310 Class for 2/4/09

Class,

First, thank you for your understanding about Monday and my duties with Founder's Day.

Second, today we will do the following.

1. We will talk about the Google articles.

2. We will work on the Google presentations in class. I have decided to do the presentations in reverse alphabetically order. These students will present on Monday Feb. 9th. The remainder of the class will present on Wednesday Feb 11th.

Jones, Thelma E.
Lamar, Kayland T.
Lambert, Rennard G.
McAuliffe, Kathy J.
Pearman, Heather G.
Roe, Julia W.
Scott, Caleb M.
Smith, Tyler T.
Williams, Jennifer L.

3. I will also come around and check off the iGoogle assignment today.

4. The blog assignment for next week is the following.

1. Search the web for at least two examples in the United States of schools or teachers using blogs in K-12 classrooms. Review at least two sites that you find and write a paragraph on each that gives the other students a sense of how blogs are being used in the examples that you find. For example, if you find a school in Minnesota that is using blogs, summarize their use in five or six sentences. Do the same for another example. Include in your post links that work to the sites that you find. Also post a picture (of the school, teacher, or some picture used on the site) for each example about which you write. ATQS (3)(c) 1.(iii); (3)(c) 4.(i); (3)(c) 4.(ii)

2. Search the web for at least two INTERNATIONAL schools or teachers using blogs in K-12 classrooms. Write a summary for each site in the same manner that you used for June 19. Include in your post links that work to the sites that you find. Also post a picture (of the school, teacher, or some picture used on the site) for each example about which you write.

There will be no blog assignment on Monday Feb 9th due to the Google Presentations. I will assign another blog assignment on Wednesday Feb. 11th.

EDM 310 Class for 2/2/09

Class,

For Founder's Day the Dean has asked me to be available all day for guest speakers coming in since I am the College of Education's coordinator of technology. I will be setting up equipment in the COE as well as at Laidlaw Performing Arts Center. He told me I could get a sub for class but I talked to him and decided to make it a work day for your Google presentations. We will be working on them all week. You can work on it in class during the regular time or you can work on it on your own at home for Monday 2/2/09. There is not a new blog assignment and we will talk about the Google articles on Wednesday. If you have any questions I will be available Tuesday 2/3/09. I will be in and out of the COE tomorrow so if you see me and have a question just ask.

Thanks,
G.Tashbin

EDM 310 Class for 1/28

Class, today we are going to try and do the following:

1. Talk about Grades in eCollege

2. Talk about ACCESS

3. Sign up for ACCESS lab visit times

4. Talk about Google Presentation criteria

5. Begin working on Google Presentations


Blog Assignment due Monday Febuary 2nd.

Read the two articles pertaining to Google and make a post to your blog of about a paragraph or two for each article about your feelings for each. Also, try and look over some of your classmates responses using the class list from our class blog. You do not have to make a comment on anyone elses post just read some of them and see what they think. If you do make a comment please keep in constructive (no negative comments) and we will talk about it next week.

EDM 310 Class for 1/26

Class,

Today we will do the following:

1. Make sure that everyone has signed up for a gmail account and setup their blogs.

2. Talk about ALEX

3. Begin looking at Google Docs and IGoogle

4. The second blog assignment is due Wednesday Jan. 28th.

ATQS (5)(c) 3.(i): Search the web for information about the Alabama
Connecting Classroom, Educators and Students Statewide (ACCESS) program. Download and
review the PowerPoint presentation available at: http://accessdl.state.al.us
For your post this week, write at least two paragraphs summarizing ACCESS and the resources available to teachers.

Download and review the PowerPoint presentation available (The link is called ACCESS Presentation (ppt)) at: http://accessdl.state.al.us/showaccess.php?lnk=aboutaccess . The presentation is located about half way down the page.

Following the same model you used to write about ALEX, discuss the Alabama Connecting Classroom, Educators and Students Statewide (ACCESS) program.

EDM 310 Class for Today 1/21

Class,

Today we will do the following:

1. Make sure that everyone has signed up for a gmail account and setup their blogs.

2. Take a Word Processing Diagnostic Exam (The last diagnostic exam)

3. The first blog assignment is due Monday Jan. 26th

Review the current and emerging state initiatives and programs including, but not limited to,Alabama Learning Exchange (ALEX) and the Alabama Connecting Classroom, Educators and Students Statewide (ACCESS) program and their relationship to student achievement. ATQS(5)(c) 3.(i)

Start by doing a search in Google. Examine the material that is available at http://alex.state.al.us Read the materials provided.

For the blog post due Jan 26th, write two or more paragraphs in which you describe ALEX and the resources available to teachers well enough so that someone unfamiliar with ALEX would understand what it is and how it works. Then provide the reader
with your thoughts as to the usefulness of ALEX to you when you begin teaching.

Next week, we will start learning about Google documents.

Welcome to EDM 310

Welcome to Mr. Tashbin's EDM 310 Class Blog for the Spring 2009 term. I hope you find this site helpful and that you consult it on a regular basis. It is the source for all EDM 310 information for our class. I look forward to working with everyone this semester.

First Assignment: I have sent an email to your PAWS accounts. Please, pull up this email and make sure that you received it and that you follow the instructions in the email. We need to setup our Google accounts so we can start setting up our blogs for the semester.

EDM 310 Instructional Videos

Almost every major project is or will be explained in Instructional Videos by Dr. John H Strange, EDM 310 program coordinator. Look to the right and locate the videos that have been posted to date under this heading. Click on the appropriate video to watch it. More videos will be added on a regular basis.

You should monitor the videos that are available and make use of them as appropriate.