Voki

I have to start of by saying that I really like this activity.  In fact out of all the activities that I completed or participated in this is by far my favorite.  I could see myself using this site with any age group both young and old.  I actually had both my five and thirteen year old watching me create this Voki and they were both very interested. Below you can see my Voki. I used the smiley face because I think that it would work well for all ages. If I was planning on using this for younger students I would probably lean more toward an animal and for older kids I would use an image.

Wordle

I have had the opportunity to create Wordles before in other classes.  For this assignment I created three different Wordles.  Here are the three links:
ISTE-NETS.T 2000 Wordle
ISTE-NETS.T 2008 Wordle
My Wordle on the Holocaust and WWII
Below is a screen shot of the 2000 ISTE-NETS.T wordle:

As you can see from this Wordle the dominant feature or component is teachers.  Next is technology and then learning.





Next is a screen shot of 2008

As you can see from this Wordle the dominant features are learning and digital.  While teachers are also a main priority they are not the main focus.  It seems that the standards are now focused more on the digital learning instead of the teachers.  

The last Wordle that I created is for my future classroom.  I am not a full time teacher yet, I am just enjoying my time as a sub.  However, I am very passionate about history therefore I decided to create a Wordle on the Holocaust and WWII.  Below you can see the image that was created.  

As you can see there are several dominant features that I choose to include.  They include: Jews, Germany, Holocaust, Nazi, final solution, Hitler, and WWII.  I choose these words because they are what I feel is most important.  However, if I would do this activity with my students I would make it clear that their Wordles would or could be significantly different than mine.  

Google Sites

Fortunately I have had the opportunity to work with Google Sites before.  In fact for this assignment I was just going to make updates to one of my previous sites.  However, after careful consideration I decided to create a new site but use some of the content from my previous one.  I am a little confused about editing the side bar to include links to my different pages.  I played around with the site a little to see how to link them but it just keeps taking me back to my page that I downloaded into the site.  I am going to continue to try and figure this out but I wanted to go ahead and post what I have completed so far.  For this site I included a picture and quote that I love, and my teaching philosophy, both of which come from my previously created site.  Then I uploaded my resume and rubric into the new site.
I personally think that this is a wonderful activity.  I really enjoy working with Google Sites even though I am not very good at it.  In completing this activity I think students are most closely relating to standard 2 of the ISTE-NETS.T standards. This is due to the fact that students are creating and developing a web site of this own design.  The outcomes are limitless. However, the best thing about this activity is that depending on implementation and overall outcomes, it could easily be formatted to suit standards one, three, and five as well.
Here is the link to my new site: Kristina's Web Page
Here is the link to my Showcase Portfolio in which I wanted to include because it truly shows how much I worked with Google Sites.

Excel 2

I just figured out (MOST OF) the Excel 1 assignment and am now trying to complete the Excel 2 assignment!  Hopefully I will have more to post by tonight!
This assignment did not seem as difficult to figure out as the first.  However, I could not do this in Excel so I had to use the Student's T-Test site that was provided.  I imputed information from two different groups.  The first group was for the males and the second was for the females.  I put the numerical values into the site and calculated for both the One Tailed T-test and the Two Tailed T-test.  I also looked at the link provided that gave detailed information about the differences in the test.  But after reading this site I have to admit that I am still not one hundred percent sure what it all means.  I do know that the I will not reject the null because the P value is less then 5 percent for both tests.  This means that even though there is a difference between male and female scores it is more likely to be do to chance or measurement error then gender.  Below is a Jing capture of my T-Test scores:

One research topic I could have my students test is "Does weight effect how fast an object falls to the ground."  For this the independent variable would be the weight of the objects being dropped and the dependent variable would be the distance in which the object is dropped from.  I could have them drop a quarter and a baseball and have someone time to see how fast they drop.  One error that they may find is the person timing may start or stop differently.

Excel 1

I have to admit that I am really starting to get frustrated with this class.  I have Excel but it is an older version (one in which I probably need to upgrade, but until this class had no need) and it does not have an Add-Ons option.  I have tried to figure this out and can not.  I uploaded the state comparisons into a Google Doc and tried to figure out how to do the descriptive statistics using the HELP menu but it is no help I can not figure it out.  I have included a link to the document that I have so far and will continue to try and get it but it is not looking promising.
Also I posted in the discussion page so hopefully someone will have some advice for what I need to do!
Well I still did not figure out the short cut for descriptive statistics but I did figure out how to do most of the calculations manually in the excel that I have.  I am still trying to figure out how to get the standard error but I think I have the rest.  According to the data West Virginia is not doing so well.  We currently only have nine states that scored lower than us and forty-three that are above us.  The average of all scores is 220.4077278 and West Virginia's overall score is 214.3860242 which is significantly lower.  Below is a picture of my statistics and my scatter plot. I think I figured out how to compute the standard error and it is 0.9275.  It is not filled in in the picture below because I took this Jing shot before I figured it out.

Rubistar

I absolutely love this site.  I have used this site previously and again I absolutely love it.  Overall the site is easy to follow and very user friendly.  It contains so many great rubrics that you can either use as they are or make adjustments to suit any activity or lesson you are grading.  For this assignment I chose a rubric for elementary independent reading.  Although I liked all of the criteria listed for this rubric, I chose the main points that I personally would be interesting in observing and grading.  Here is the link to my rubric.

Maps 2

Here is a capture of my map in Google Earth.  I did not zoom in very closely because I wanted all of my points visible.  This is not the first time I have used Google Earth.  I have played around with it many times including zooming in close enough to look at my property.  However, this is the first time I uploaded anything into Google Earth.  The whole process was fairly simple and easy to follow.  Upon doing this assignment was the first time I encountered KML before so I had to research and find out exactly what it stood for.  I determined that the acronym stood for "Keyhole Markup Language" and is used to take two dimensional information and place it into three dimensional format.  I really like Google Earth and I think it is a great tool for educators to use with their students.

Maps 1

I decided to create a trip that takes students on a short tour of historical sites from the Civil War. I know there are many many important places to visit and cover when learning about the Civil War, but I decided to choose locations in which are close to my hometown. Because I am from Grafton WV I decided to start and end my trip there. The trip starts at the Birth Place of Anna Jarvis which was a field headquarters for union commanders in 1861, and ends backs in Grafton at the National Cemetery. Again although there are many other places I would love to include in this trip I tried to keep all sites as close to home as possible. Overall I like using Google Maps but I have to admit that this map really made and is still making me mad. I set up the route keeping everything in order so that there is little to no backtracking. However, every time I save the map it rearranges my sites and messes everything up. I have tried rearranging my map several times and it still will not stay where I want them. Even with the problems I am having I still think this is a great activity and believe that students would not only benefit from it, but enjoy planning a trip as well. This activity could be formatted to suit a couple of the ISTE.NETS-T standards, but I think it most closely falls into standard 2. I feel this way because in order for students to do this activity they have to design and create a digital field trip. They have to take what they want to see or visit and place that information into a digital work of art. For this activity I made a Google Document that has a brief description of the places I want include. I also created the map in which we will not follow because it keeps rearranging itself.

Self Grading Form

For this assignment I had to create a quiz and set the response spreadsheet to grade each question and then to give a sum of all graded answers. Creating the form and sending it to recipients to answer was relatively easy because it was basically the same activity we did for Google forms. I was completely lost when trying to set up the spreadsheet to answer the questions. I am not very familiar or comfortable with spreadsheet so I do not know how to change the functions. The video that was attached to the assignment page was a life saver. If not for the video I would still be completely lost. After viewing, stopping, pausing, and replaying the video several times I was able to complete my spreadsheet. I was a little confused and set up the page before the answers were recorded and for some reason this did not work so I had to go back and reset the functions after all the quizzes were returned. Overall I like this assignment. I like that in the video it told you how to type in the functions but I am still wondering why we used some of the keys. For example, why did we use the dollar sign? I have no idea and I wish that he would have explained why we used it. Here is a link to my quiz, my spreadsheet, and the tutorial video that aided me in my process.