Summer Courses and Opportunities

This summer-well technically it isn't summer yet-I am taking several courses online for my MSET Program.  One of these courses is called Multimedia Productions.  It started on Monday.  I am really hoping to learn and use some of the course ideas for my Multimedia course I offer for my High School classroom.  I do not have any curriculum for my high school classroom-so I will need to come up with ideas, lessons and tools to offer this.  This is our last week of "school" for my students.  We have had to be online for this last quarter-all of it.  Some students, like my own daughter did well with online learning-actually, probably better then being in the classroom.  She is a chatty one and gets distracted by others.  Being online-there are no others students to distract her.  Some students though really struggled with not having the support from home to help them stay on top of their assignments.  Or they were able to do the assignment-but need more support of going through the directions because they tend to not read them.  I think if I have to begin next year online-some of the changes that I would make would be doing a video through loom-where the students must watch the video and then answer questions.  I currently offered a video but many students skipped the video-how do I know these innocent angels were skipping the video?  Well-when you get questions that were answered in the video-you know they didn't watch it.  

Anyways on to my plans for the summer. I am taking another online course through USD which partners with DSU for their MSET program-it doesn't begin until June sometime and is something about Active Learning.  I also have signed up to take a 1 credit course called TEACH Camp.  That is free to take online June 1st and 2nd -half days.  If you want it for credit it is only $40.  I am hoping to be accepted for 2 other things that I have applied for.  One-I applied back in January or February for a one week workshop on ECS-Exploring Computer Science.  It is a curriculum that I will learn about and then implement in one of my classes.  I am thinking either 7th, 8th or 9th grade.  I also will receive a stipend for doing the class-which is also a nice incentive!  I am hoping to hear soon.  Another opportunity that came through my email was from DSU-Cybersecurity.  This would have me learning about Cybersecurity for a period of time and then implementing a course about it.  I could easily add a Cybersecurity course into my 9th Grade Computer class.  Another stipend is offered through this too.  

Another opportunity that I am considering is offering Summer Challenge camps this summer in July-IF we can.  I originally -before COVID-was going to offer 10 sessions on Scratch programming for students in 2 age brackets.  They are still considering Summer Challenge possibly for July-if the School Board says it is okay in June.  SO, we will see.

Week 14 

Final Project

This week is our final work for the class CET 720 Leadership and Evaluation.  This week we were to focus on an overview of what we have learned throughout the class by creating an IGNITE talk.  An Ignite talk uses 20 slides with an auto advancement at 15 seconds each.  I researched different ideas about how to organize an Ignite talk before starting.  I then created an outline focusing on the first 9 slides on the first book we read, "The Innovator's Mindset" by George Couros and then the next 9 slides on the book "The Edtech Advocate's Guide to Leading Change in Schools" by Mark Gura.  The first slide-I related it to my own thinking of technology and the last slide of what is happening in today's world for technology and a closing "gotcha."  My first information was way long for each slide.  I then began timing on a stopwatch to cut out extraneous information.  That was really hard.  Then you need to make sure you are transitioning with your words into the next slide.  Once I had a good overall outline-I began picking pictures for backgrounds.  To me an Ignite talk should have the focus on the speaker with just a visual for people to look at that relates to the point the speaker is making.  So all of my slides are background pictures only.  I also struggled with wanting to create a Title page!!!! I put one in and took it out, put it in and took it out, put it at the end and took it out.  The directions said to use the Apps Loom or Screen cast-o-matic.  I had trouble with each as you needed to have your webcam showing you at the same time as presenting.  I couldn't get them to work.  So, I emailed the Professor to use my tried and trusty Screencastify.  I then practiced and practiced.  I have 4 videos uploaded!  I then realized I looked terrible so I needed makeup!  So here is my overview of the course in my Ignite talk. ENJOY!