A Professional Portfolio is Born

After weeks of work in class and documenting my work in a portfolio that can be read by anyone, I am ready to share it with the world via the world wide web. This portfolio is a compilation of the work in my Educational Technology and Design class. Each major assignment is set up as an artifact. Each artifact is described, explained how it meets the requirements of the objective it was produced to teach, and linked to the Interstate New Teacher Assessment Support Consortium (INTASC) Standads explaining how it fulfills the requirement of the standard(s) with which this tool was meant to conform. It was a work in progress during the course of the class. I am very proud to present this to you now. Please accept this invitation to view my Kathy's Professional Portfolio:

Photo credit: Kathy Seibel personal collection

During my Educational Technology and Design Class, I was introduced to some of the new technology being used in some of the classrooms across the country. Things such as podcasting, using handhelds in the classroom, classroom blogs, back channels and and wikis sounded like foreign words when I first heard them. Many of these things are being used in schools in the United States today. An example of a podcast used within Penn Manor School District in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and then within the state, with the participation of Wayne Highlands School District in Honesdale, Pennsylvania, can be found at The Monster Exchange Can you imagine working on an assignment with someone in another part of the state? How about in another part of the country, or even the world. The technology is here. It's just a matter of taking advantage of it.

Another bit of technology was how teachers can use iPods for teaching in the classroom. iPods are like miniature hard drives that can download just about anything allowing a 1:1 computer:student ratio. Even here in little ole Iowa, where many people think the state is populated by farmers and cows, we have schools making use of this technology, like the small town of Mount Ayr-population just under 2,000-who received a grant from the Iowa Learning Technology Commission to purchase the school iBooks for every seventh and eighth grade classroom so each student would have the use of a computer at home and school each year.

Classroom blogs are becoming popular as well. If you don't think you'd find a way to use a blog in your classroom, check out Web 2.0 in the Classroom: 33 Ways to use blogs in your classroom and in the educational setting.

Moran, Susannah. maclaptop.jpg. June, 2006.

Video Project:: Dramatizing a Fable

What a job! I surely have newly found respect for why the editors of movies get Oscars. A two and a half minute video took me almost an entire week-including a couple of 12+ hour days-to produce and edit. Even though it was a lot of work, it was also a lot of fun. The best part of doing this project was learning that I could make and edit a video. Not only will this be beneficial in the classroom, it is something that will be great for sharing family activities with out-of-state relatives. As much as I think I'll be able to use this feature, I just might get as quick at it as Cameron Murray, even though I'll still have to work hard and learn a lot more to become as even near as talented.

There are many ways to use videos in the classroom. TeacherTube, a part of YouTube, has videos that can be used in the classroom. Teachers can add their own videos as well. My video was an instructional video showing how to make items. I found an instructional video for a literature circle. In this video teachers role play the parts of participants of a literature circle as a means of showing how a literature circle works. Watch this informative video from TeacherTube: Literature Circles.

See my video: Dramatizing a Fable. I hope you enjoy it.

Photo credit: Kathy Seibel personal collection

Digital Youth Profile

June 11, 2009

Today is my husband's and my 32nd wedding anniversary. To celebrate, he waited until I got home from class to make our supper-taco salad. It was delicious. Now I'm trying to keep up with my homework for my class. I'm still working on the video project. While looking for information online I ran across a video profile of a young man who makes these videos for the fun of it. And it sure looks like he has fun doing it, too.

The video was from the Digital Youth Portrait, part of the Digital Generation Project, on Edutopia.com about a young man named Cameron Murray. Cameron is 11 years old and attends Westfield Intermediate School in Westfield, Indiana where he lives. Cameron's Digital Youth Portrait was inspirational and amazing to watch. He talked about making his own movies, learning how to use a green screen by watching a YouTube video, and putting special effects into his videos.

Cameron helps the teachers at school, tutoring them in digital media techniques. He considers himself a visual learner, and when learning about positive and negative integers in school, he made a video to help him understand them better. He then brought the video to school and shared it with his class. Video presentations are a part of Cameron's classwork as well. He tutors the other students, and his teacher-at their request, in making videos.

Cameron told how he wakes up at 5:30am, goes to his garage and practices hockey shots. On the video, he showed how he taped himself and then played it back to analyze his hand placement on his stick and can then use this to help improve his game. When he's not practicing hockey or making his videos, he also likes to play guitar. He explained how he made a music video of himself playing a rock song by taping himself playing the piano, again playing the guitar, and a third time singing. He then combined these three clips into one video that looks like there are three Cameron's as the musical group in this music video.

For a summer job, Cameron plans to put a flier out in his neighborhood asking if families would like him to put together video slide shows from their family pictures, even adding music to the background.

I was impressed with how his parents and teachers viewed his technological passion and skill. His dad looks to Cameron for help using the computer, which Cameron enjoys, saying that it's like a reverse where he is younger, but he knows more and they learn from him.

As I'm working on my first digital video, and am feeling very much the digital immigrant, I am in awe of this young man's ability. Preparing this video for my class has me stressing and half scared to death. Yet Cameron seems to do this on a daily basis as a hobby. I hope I can become as proficient with making videos as Cameron is. Great job Cameron! Click the link if you are interested in viewing Cameron's Digital Youth Portrait.


Photo credit: Edutopia's Digital Generation Project

Spreadsheet Assignment

July 9, 2009
Spreadsheet Assignment


This assignment is about is building a spreadsheet where the students will fill in the blanks. I'm asking fourth grade students to count the nouns, adjectives, pronouns, verbs, and adverbs in a short fable. After putting the information into the spreadsheet, it will generate a graph. The graph will give them a visual to understand how many adverbs and adjectives were used to bring this story to life. The students will be able to refer to this information when writing their fable.


Reflection Guidelines for the Spreadsheet Assignment

1. My thematic unit topic is Fabulous Fables

2. The unit objective this project supports is Objective 3: Using the computer (C), fourth grade students (A) will write and illustrate (B) their own fable (D). –DM Language Arts, Grade 4

3. The audience for this assignment is fourth grade students

4. This project supports the component “encourage students’ development of critical thinking” from standard number 4: “Instructional Strategies” because the students will need to differentiate between the parts of speech to complete this assignment. This project also supports the component "Integrates the computer and other high and low technology” from standard number 11: Computer Technology, because the students will use the computer to complete the spreadsheet to generate the graph.

Another example of a spreadsheet being used in the classroom is about movie soundtrack CD prices

Photo credit: Kathy Seibel personal collection

Educational Cartoons from WAY back

Friday, June 5, 2009

I'm working away on my spreadsheet assignment while simultaneously gathering ideas and supplies for my upcoming video. Class and time are going by very quickly and I have a lot of work to get done. I did want to stop and share a memory from years ago...something that used to go with Saturday morning cartoons. They are just as relevant now as they were then and as much fun to watch:



Find more of these little cute Schoolhouse Rock videos by clicking here.

It is amazing how these little tunes that I learned from and enjoyed as a youth are now available at the touch of a few keys. We used to have to wait on Saturday mornings to see what the new one would be. Now I can watch the entire series by Googling one and following the links to all of the rest of them. The more I get into new things on my computer, and on the web, the more into this technology the more I like it. I can see why it caught my kids' attention when I was so busy doing all my "Mom" stuff and letting them explore the computer. I think I'll soon be able to have a knowledgeable conversation with my oldest son, the awesome computer geek. :)

We didn't think of these little cartoons as technology. The View Master was a big deal to us. Even thoug h there were instruments that showed individual slides similar to this hundreds of years ago, and of course we had no idea of tha t at the time, it was big stuff to us. But then again, this was when TV's took "tubes" to work and the front had two or three dials on t he front to adjust the channel, the volume, and hopefully the picture quality.

Photo credit: Kolk, Melinda. vmaster.png. November 2002. Pics4Learning. 22 Jun 2009

The Webquest Assignment

I just completed the most intense assignment for my Ed Tech & Design class so far. I hope you have a chance to go look at my WebQuest on fables. This assignment walks small groups of 4th grade students through researching fables, and putting on a presentation for their class retelling the fable they chose. It was a great experience and something I'd really like to use in a classroom. This project is so interactive and really has the students collaborating to accomplish their end goal. I think I might supply popcorn on the day everyone does their presentations. It would be like seeing a live show with song and dance, and live acts performed.

It was a very involved assignment that required a lot of attention to detail. As intense as I described it as being, it was also a great learning experience. I had no idea that I'd ever be able to create a website, let alone one like my WebQuest that would potentially add so much excitement to a lesson for a classroom. I believe being able to work as a group, largely on their own, on projects like this will appeal greatly to students who are already very computer savvy.

During my computer technology and design class, one thing that was made clear: I am a digital immigrant. My students will be digital natives. If I want to teach them on their terms, I need to add a lot more digital and computer knowledge to my repertoire of teaching skills. The old days of lecturing by the teacher and regurgitating information by the students is in the past. Good riddance, I say. I don't know if anyone was ever truly inspired in that type of an environment. I have been inspired by what I am learning in this class and can't wait to put it into action. No wonder students, with all of the imagination of youth, can't get enough of it!

Other school projects using WebQuest can be found online at sites such as A new twist on an old tale

Photo credit: Kathy Seibel personal collection