Week+Four+Wiki+Journal

The weeks are flying by here. This week's coaching clinic in Columbus was great. The cohort that I’m in has become very close. Our discussions about successes and problems helped all of us work through problems and gave us ideas for change. In the sharing of student work the websites that Nate's LA class has been working on received good reviews. I was given a great link for writers. [] FanFiction is great place for writers and readers. You can share, critique, and be critiqued.

Sherry’s social studies class has just started group projects. They will take a Chinese invention and produce a commercial that tells about it. They are currently researching the invention. Some of the groups want to produce a video for the commercial. In my computer class students learned earlier in the year how to turn a PowerPoint into a QuickTime video and want to do that. At the beginning of the week students worked with Chinese numbers. Sherry found a good worksheet at edhelper.com. I taught her how to save the html format as a pdf for archiving. ,, We also incorporated a website that will convert our numbering system to Chinese. []

Nate’s class is continuing their reading of __The Hobbit__ and __The Heroes of Greek Mythology__. Each student has their own site where they display their work. Here’s an example of one of the student websites. media type="file" key="Screen Recording 7.mov" width="300" height="300" Something I learned this week was QuickTime's ability to do screen recordings with sound. Which I used with the display of Jordan's website. Each student reading The Hobbit has a Glog. which the students have really enjoyed.

The creating of the student needs assessment was a challenge for us. We had good discussion, but we didn't feel the examples given were of much benefit. We put together what we think will give us the data that we are looking for. The best part of the needs assessment was the discovery of Google forms. The team is excited about the possibilities of this tool. After seeing the work we have done in a short time the technology department has obtained a Google Docs domain for the school district.

The team is looking forward to a short week and the Thanksgiving break. We will attend the Ohio Middle School conference in Columbus on November 30 and December 1.

//MJ Wolfe writes//: Doug, I'm so pleased the coaching clinic was worthwhile. Like you I am impressed by QuickTime's abilities. I've long been a friend of Apple's products. Right now I'm a Mac person trapped in a PC world. Your comments on Week 4's content are a bit sparse. It must have been difficult to perform your duties as coach, attend the clinic, and participate as a student all at the same time