Visual Task Tips

I am making a list of the Technology Tools I use regularly and I will post those sometime soon, but in doing so, I came across a cool little know download that is helpful - Visual Task Tips

http://www.visualtasktips.com/

Once installed, it allows you to have a visual of anything that is on your taskbar. It is an easy download and free for non-commercial use.

Google docs - a learning curve

I created a rubric with which I can track quarterly progress of my students for the rest of the year - as I test-run the rubric. I have my results from 3rd quarter.

The learning curve of using google docs as an assessment aggregator is pretty steep. I am having trouble editing and moving columns etc.

To the basics, I did not know how to create a documents, so I went to templates and searched for rubrics and found one that made sense for what I was trying to do. I figured out what sort of questions it contained and then I started from scratch and made my own.

I have completed the rubrics for two classes and that information goes automatically to a spreadsheet. I created the formulas on the spreadsheet because I do not see any place that does that automatically.

There are graphs available which are very easy to generate, but they are not allowing me to save. That is something I have to figure out. It tells me it is incompatible with API.

This has potential, but after 3 hours at it today, I am finished.

A weekend to remember - not to Blog!

My son's wedding! It was a low-tech weekend - except that we all kept in touch around the resort via cell phones and text messaging! Then before I went to bed, I posted all my photos (and those of my sister) on Picasa and sent the link to the bride and groom. I said low-tech, right?

analyzing assessments

I spent time with "ReMark", but it is expensive and really not the best for what I am trying to do. Mark Richardson led me to Google Docs and I searched for rubric templates and I looked around until I found one that made sense for me listening rubric. I tweaked the template and now I have my own rubric. I look forward to filling in the data and analyzing the data! Project almost finished?

no dictionaries!

I just read Andrea's post about her activity in class where the students had to negotiate meaning of a text using an online dictionary. Very cool on many levels! Bravo Andrea! I love that they copied, pasted, highlighted, went to the web, typed, discussed and more - and never even used a pen or piece of paper. I bet they even stayed on task.

I have used this whole-language approach this year - negotiating meaning from a text just above my students' level, but not with the copy, paste, highlight, translate method... very doable and I especially like that they learn their is no perfect translation!

My mind is spinning... will I remember this in the Fall? Would the students be able to do this activity when there is a sub - ahh certainly, if I taught them the tools in advance!

Remark download

I spent the afternoon trying out the remark program. It is not intuitive. It is the program I want to use for aggregating my students' scores on their listening assessments and looking at their progress over time.

I managed to create a bubble scoresheet

I managed to scan it

I downloaded the program

I made some progress in getting the program to recognize the scoresheet.

I know what to do next, but I ran out of time. I am far enough that I can run off the score sheets and bubble in the scores.

There are a couple problems here: number one. the learning curve is very steep and I don't have time at the end of the year to devote to learning a new technology. number two. I don't know if there is actually a free version of this software and the pay version is $900! So, if I learn all of this and can't apply it next year, I may not be any better off?!?

I will be better for the journey, right?

So, I got my thoughts together and created the rubric I have been using all year using the OMR font that Mark downloaded for me. Now I will be able to use it to mark my listening comp tests I give and it can be charted. All year, I have been charting the composite score. This program, should allow me to chart progress in individual categories. It will be great going forward next year, as I chart progress starting at the beginning of the year. I will play with it with my third and fourth quarter assessments to see if it needs to be tweaked, then I will be ready to run with it for next year.

forming habits and lots of wonderings

This is not a habit yet. I have to figure out the right homepage. I am leaning toward iGoogle, but if I do, then I need to play around with how to configure it. I also need to find the right time to read through the aggregator and then, do I want to blog right away? What do I do when I find something of interest? take notes? do I figure how to do a split screen and put notes in oneNote? who should I talk to about all this? who is at this point in their wonderings?

April 17

I wrote a couple comments to Andrea, but then they were lost in cyber-space. I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out where they went. I still do not know. I had marvelous things to share with Andrea about things she is blogging about, but darn-it, I don’t want to re-think what I already thought!

formative assessments

Through my PLC and the training we have received all year on formative and summative assessments, I have worked on formulating a way to assess listening skills of my students. Where were they at the beginning of the year and do they make progress by the end of the year. I assess their progress at the end of each quarter and work toward their improvement during each quarter. The tools we are learning today will give me a tool to give the students feedback about their progress. To date, I have just kept their results in excell and have analyzed them on my own. It will be very helpful for me to have graphs to show them their individual progress vs the class progress.

Trying to navigate Google reader

Evidently, I have had Google Reader set up for a couple years - my children helped me find sits that would be of interest to me! Well, since I just now found it again today, I would say it has not been of much use to me. The trick will be to keep my reader on the Google homepage.