The long awaited final project!

Hello everyone, and thank you for following along in my journey to create my curriculum page.  I hope you enjoy the final product available at this link: http://eme5050-curriculum-page.wikispaces.com/ 

I look forward from hearing from all of you regarding it's content and how well you think it would work in a classroom.

Thanks,

Alex

Rubric, the all in one tool!

AR 7

I LOVE RUBRICS!  I hope that was clear for everyone.  :)

I suppose I have to substantiate the reason that I love rubrics, and that is something I am happy to do.

The first reason I love rubrics is that they give you an objective way to grade and assess student’s work.  This does not just include presentation projects, but also ‘regular’ graded projects (essays, book reports, etc.).  The rubric gives you as a teacher a way to go through each project and check off each of the important pieces of the presentation and make sure that they meet the specified standard.

The second reason I love a good rubric is that it takes the element of ‘surprise’ out of grading for everyone involved.  The teacher knows what is expected, the student knows what is expected and the students’ parents can see ahead of time what it is their student needs to do to achieve a good grade on their class work.  There is none of that “will my teacher like this” or “I wonder what my teacher meant when she/he said to do …” or my favorite “Why did my child get this grade?”  It is all there in black and white ahead of time!

Now, the key to making sure these two steps are really that effective is to go over the rubric when you first assign the project with your students.  Then show the students an example of a good presentation and a bad presentation (if possible from previous students).  This way everyone in the class can see what each element is meant to look like.  At that point the teacher can address any questions the students might have regarding the project or the clarity of the rubric.

Rubrics are a two-in-one solution.  They are instructions and a grading scale all in one.  To this end my presentation example has been added to my Curriculum page as well as my rubric (see below to view).

I’ll be honest, I used a teacher tool to create mine (I mentioned it in a different blog).  It is by far my favorite rubric site (I’ve used a few and this one I like the best).  The site is called RubiStar, and it gives you the opportunity to choose a grade level, a subject matter, and even different ‘typical’ assignments within each subject matter.  Surprisingly to me a digital story was one of the available options.

Once you pick all from all the categories you end up with a blank rubric.  On the left there are a number of cells and you can pick from the suggested list of categories (that already have pre-written descriptions) or you can choose to name something on your own.  The other really neat tool is that even if you pick a pre-designed category you can still change what each description says to match your curriculum needs.

You can also choose the weight point each category will get (on the top of each column).  I feel this tool is so customizable that it’s virtually adjustable to any project.  And the fact that there are different pre designed categories give you (as an educator) a hint on what types of questions/categories you want your students to achieve in this project.  I know for me it gave me two ideas that I had wanted to represent but I wasn’t sure how to grade within the project (flow and purpose).

Saving the final rubric into a word document is not too hard (you first save it as an excel sheet and then transfer it over to word document).  After that it was just a matter of uploading it to my wiki page as a file for students to view and download for their final project!

So please, read, review, and comment.  Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions.  Keep in mind; this is a project for the first week of a Spanish class in high school.  The editting is a bit funky, for that I apollogize. 

Digital Storytelling: ¿Quién soy yo?
Teacher Name: Mrs. Stewart
Student Name:     ________________________________________
CATEGORY	4	3	2	1
Point of View - Purpose	Establishes a purpose early on and maintains a clear focus throughout.	Establishes a purpose early on and maintains focus for most of the presentation.	There are a few lapses in focus, but the purpose is fairly clear.	It is difficult to figure out the purpose of the presentation.
Images	Images create a distinct atmosphere or tone that matches different parts of the story. The images may communicate symbolism and/or metaphors.	Images create an atmosphere or tone that matches some parts of the story. The images may communicate symbolism and/or metaphors.	An attempt was made to use images to create an atmosphere/tone but it needed more work. Image choice is logical.	Little or no attempt to use images to create an appropriate atmosphere/tone.
Duration of Presentation	Length of presentation was 3 minutes.	Length of presentation was 2-3 minutes.	Length of presentation was 2 minutes.	Presentation was less than 2 minutes long OR more than 5 minutes.
Grammar	Grammar and usage were correct (for Spanish) and contributed to clarity, style and character development.	Grammar and usage were typically correct (for Spanish) and errors did not detract from the story.	Grammar and usage were typically correct for Spanish but errors detracted from story.	Repeated errors in grammar and usage distracted greatly from the story.
Spanish Words	There were at least 3 Spanish words per slide/image that helps in the description and story flow.	There are 2 Spanish words per slide/image that help in the description and flow of the digital story.	There is 1 Spanish word per slide/image that helps in the description and flow of the digital story.	There are no Spanish words in the presentation. OR the words used are not related to the slide/image they are associated with.
Economy	The story is told with exactly the right amount of detail throughout. It does not seem too short nor does it seem too long.	The story composition is typically good, though it seems to drag somewhat OR need slightly more detail in one or two sections.	The story seems to need more editing. It is noticeably too long or too short in more than one section.	The story needs extensive editing. It is too long or too short to be interesting or clear.
Use of approved technology	The presentation was presented to the class using a previously approved medium.			The presentation was presented to the class using a non-approved medium.

Mi ejemplo (my example)

AR 6

My example

I found this week’s activity to be very similar to the one we did a few weeks ago, where we used a Prezi to make a presentation.  And to be honest, that was what I thought I would use for this example… then I ran into a problem.  The Prezi still would not play sound, and it did not like half the pictures I wanted to use for some reason (formatting issues).  Plus, I was still having a very hard time having it only zoom on what I wanted to.  It turns out that when you have pictures and text at the same time it tends to want to focus on only part of the picture, no matter how small I made the picture or grouped the information.

I got frustrated and started to do the digital storytelling example on PowerPoint, thinking that a different (easier) perspective on the project might help me organize my ideas a bit better.  I wanted the darn thing to be of a reasonable length, and I could have done that easily, but I realized it’s an example, so I limited it to a small number of slides.   They have lots of visual references so that my English speaking students wouldn’t be completely lost with all the Spanish text.  This would also show the students a good way of making the presentation eye catching; so that I didn’t have all pictures or all text when the time came to evaluate the project.

After I was done with the PowerPoint, I still wanted to use a digital share site, so I took the advice that Kelvin had given us a few weeks ago and I played around with a few other sites that were given to us as an option to originally create our digital storytelling presentation.  I ended up using Empress.  Empress is a free program to use like Prezi, and it has a lot of cool features (including easy to add sound), and it uploads existing PowerPoint presentations without much hassle (my last slide wouldn’t upload due to the size of the JPG – so the class doesn’t get to see my son).  But most importantly, Empress makes it easy to share my presentation with my blog and with my wiki!

And so without further delay, here is my Empress example that is also available on my Wiki page.

PS: In case you are interested, the son is "Dejame Entrar" (Let me in) by Carlos Vives.  He's a Colombian artist that was born and raised near where I was... plus, I just love that song! 

AR 5: Introduciendo a ____. (Introducing you)!

AR 5

Creating a Curriculum Page

I will admit this freely, I have no earthly clue what I was doing when I finished reading the weekly assignment module.  I actually waited until now to see examples of others first before I dove into creating my own page.  I’m still not 100% sure that I’ve got it all done (but I figure I can tweak it and not get into too much trouble between now and the end of the semester).  And yet, I am now the proud owner of a Wiki Curriculum page… YAY for me!

It’s in Spanglish if you must know, but I’ve translated the important parts to English for my future students (the EME class is pretending to be them… correct?).  I’ve got graphics, text, and web links!  I’m so proud of myself; it’s hard to believe it only took me about 3 hours in the dead of the night to get it done. 

But I digress.  This activity reflection is regarding how my experience went… so here we go.  (Just so everyone is clear, I’m using Wikispaces.com)

It was awful!  I apparently did NOT follow directions well, and did half the page wrong the first time.  Turns out I was not creating new pages, but renaming my pages to different titles.  So if you clicked on HOME you got my page on lesson plans, or if you clicked introduction you got my reference page.  It was terrible.  I then tried to use the help feature to fix it.  It was useless!  I couldn’t make heads or tails of what I had done, so fixing it was out of the question.  After about 30 min. of this frustrating experience I decided it wasn’t worth it, and chucked my whole page worth of work and started a new one. 

This was MUCH better.  I already knew what I wanted to write, and how I wanted to format each page.  And I had already uploaded my pictures/clip art to the wiki platform (which so nicely keeps this handy for you).  To be honest the hardest part of the uploading process was getting my Wordle (wordle.com) page to be saved as a .JIF (you have to do a screen shot, and fix it with paint, save it, finally upload it).  The rest of the images I found using Iclip and Google’s free clip art search.  [I would like it noted I’m integrating tons of stuff here.] 

I did go ahead and fill in some of the pages that I created, since I had either a) already done the work for it, or b) found it really easy to fill in.  Therefore you can clearly see completed the following pages: home, introduction, digital resources, and my rubric (I have a rubric tool, it’s amazing and it’s at: rubistar.4teachers.org - use it well).  This still leaves the lesson plan/standards page, and my example to do.  But this gives me time to spell check (accents won’t show on the wiki and I’m sure I’ve made mistakes), and tweak portions of the Curriculum page as I see fit. 

So after another hour or so of this, I feel like I’ve accomplished what I needed to do for this week’s work.  So, without further a due, I give you my Curriculum Page … please review!!