CEDO 540 Week Five

So we come to the ending of another class!!! The first portion of this weeks assignments was fairly interesting to work within our group. As a group we found that Google trends was not a program that we would use in our classroom given its current state. We all said that the program needs to provide more use flexibility so individuals can access various statistics on the graphs and have the ability to click on accompanying links. I think if Google made those changes, it would be beneficial.

For the second portion, Resource Assignment, we got to look at a variety of different statistical data. It was fun to look at the different websites and view the different information that was being generated as well the different ways that information was displayed. I enjoyed looking at the WINSS website because it is one that I have used for my PDP. This time, I look at the website from a statistical stand point and the information really popped out.

CEDO 540 Week Four

This week's assignments were pretty fun. I really liked looking into Hitwise and I think that the company has a gold mine at its hands. Tancer's company is great because of the vast amount of knowledge that can be generated. It would be nice if there was some sort of free company out there that provided information to educators on the different types of information relating to statistics on student search engines.

The other portion of the assignments that I really liked was the futuristic job portions. Jobs are going to continue to change dramatically over the coming years and it will be hard to determine to the different fields that are going to be adding new careers. There are statistics out there that kids growing up today will have 10-14 careers by the time they are in their 30's. That is insane. I don't know which avenue we are going to be going in future fields, but I know they will all predominately relate to technology with most manufacturing jobs being outsource to more lower paying countries. This will cause a huge backlog of workers and we are going to see a huge influx of elderly individuals heading back to the college ranks.

CEDO 540 Week Three

This week we worked as a group on creating a survey. The survey that we chose to do was on the recent health care survey that is encompassing our country. As a group we thought that choosing something that is hot in the press would get a good number of responses and we could ask some good, non-biased questions. Both were accurate and the information that we got was interesting. When investigating the numbers it is interesting to see that some individuals in society do not seem to be involved with or pay attention to politics that make changes to their lives.

When using Survey Monkey, the program made it really easy to take the survey and distribute to others. We took the survey link and posted it on a variety of social websites, including Facebook and Twitter to help get the survey out to a larger group of people. Even users that have minimal computer knowledge had no trouble accessing the links or completing the short survey. This is important because some users seemed overwhelmed when using these new technologies, but Survey Monkey makes it simple for all to take.

CEDO 540 Week Two

This week's assignment were pretty interesting. The research that I did was fun and allowed me to access a couple new websites that I can add to my arsenal. The capterra website was really cool to look at because it provided me a new option to find software. I liked that the website involved tons of different software from a variety of different fields. I found a the website to be simple to navigate and I found a few new software programs that I am gonna try implementing in my classrooms.

Taking the time to research statistic terms was interesting and allowed me to build my knowledge on a subject that I don't have the most knowledge in. When looking at Census, I found that there was more information then I expected. I was shocked to see that the 2000 census totaled 6.5 billion, with a B, dollars. The marketing research I had a little inclination about, but after looking at it, I found that it was much more in-depth than I had expected. I did realize that there is business to business marketing research. The topic, after reviewing it, makes a lot of sense and is something that I am sure companies do all the time.

CEDO 540 Week One

Back at it again and it feels good. I am ready to hit the fast track to the end!!

Statistics is something that I have minimal knowledge about and have used very little in my classroom setting. The knowledge I have most associates with Microsoft Excel and all the equation functions that can be created on the program. Excel is a very powerful program and one that takes a lot of time to understand all of the inner workings surrounding its use.

It was good practice working with the worksheets giving me a refresher on the different concepts that are going to be covered throughout the course. The video was interesting and full of a variety of different concepts working with statistics. It is nice to see these examples so I can have ideas to base of how to use statistics in my course offerings.

CEDO 535 Week 5

This week was a fun one to work with one main thing, the Ning. I started dabbling with the Ning last week trying to get accustomed to the feel of the program and the layouts that are provided. After playing around with the program, I am witnessing that the program has a lot of power that I am using already through blackboard. The only difference being blackboard is costing my school district $$$ and is far less collaborative than the Ning is.

At first I thought that the Ning was going to be a mounting challenge because I didn't think that I had great web application creation ability. Thankfully the Ning is laid out is a simple way that allows me to create different pages with ease, link between those pages, and upload files that I use on the Internet. I am seriously considering going away from my Blackboard page next year and utilize the powers of the Ning.

Additionally this week, I looked at a variety of different Web 2.0 applications that can help change the landscape of the classroom. After looking more into sites like Diigo, Delicious, Photobucket, and Flickr, I am starting to create more ideas on how students could utilize these tools to achieve in my classroom.

CEDO 535 Week 3

This week had some interesting concepts that I really like and have starting implementing into my class. The first if the screencasting, or videocasting that I refer to it as. I had dabbled around using Jing before this assignment for projects in other classes, but had never really looked at all the intricacies of the program. Jing works great for me because I teach two courses heavily dependant on student tutorials, Introduction to Engineering Design and Digital Imaging. I constantly have students missing class so it makes it hard for them to get the material covered in class, as well as exhausting for me to re-explain what we do in-class again. I devised a way to start using videocasting to record tutorials that I can post on our school file server. This will save me time because I don't have to re-explain and will allow students who miss or forget points covered to go back and review the tutorials. I hope to continue using this program in the future and will create a detailed of files and tutorials that I will be able to share with colleagues!!

How I will share those files is pretty simple, using the next idea that I looked at, a Ning. I liked working with the Ning because it was user friendly and allows me to control the different users that are members. I plan to set up a Ning for my Digital Imaging and Introduction to Engineering that will allow members to log into the Ning and see the video tutorials that I have created for the course. I also like the Ning concept because I will provide an area where students can respond to questions that they have or other tutorials that they would like me to post on the Ning. This setup will be much easier for paperwork trails and will allow me to better monitor the works completed by students because I can have them post comments, links to websites, or links to projects that they have completed.