CEdO540 Week 5

Really liked working with Google Trends. Our group trended everything from peanut butter to vacations, to ice cream flavors! It's alot of fun and extremely interesting to see the internet activity. I will be showing this to my Business Ed teacher as I'm sure he will like it for his marketing classes.

Researching the different data table websites was also interesting. I've actually used many of them in other research I've done, so I was pretty familiar with them. The comparison was nice because now I know which ones I will use more regularly with my students.

CEdO540 Week 4

Creating a survey was kind of fun. Outside of surveying my students and teachers on technology use for our technology plan, I've never just surveyed the general public. Our group is still analyzing the data, but I am very pleased with the adversity of the population who took it. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, it was extremely easy to get the survey out to the public. I passed it along to my sister, who passed it along to her co-workers, who passed it along to their friends. It would have been much harder to get these same results if we handed out a paper survey. Plus, I think its easier to keep an online survey anonymous. Howerver, after reading up on Bill Tancer and how he conducts his research based on searches through IP addresses, I have to wonder if the survey results are truly anonymous? Could there be a way to identify by email address who took the survey and identify their individual results?

CEdO540 Week 3

As usual, the statistics homework completely confused me. I don't think I've ever felt so stupid as an educator...it's only numbers...why can't I wrap my mind around the equations? My groupmate, Andrew, really tried to to explain it to me. He's such a trooper! But, what can I say, I still don't get it.

However, we've made great progress with our survey! Our survey focuses on opinions of Walker's budget repair bill. We'll be giving it to a large population other than teachers, so it will be interesting when we analyze the results. We used Surveymonkey to create it and it was very easy! I've passed the link along to several people I work with, as well as my sisters and people they work with. Isn't technology great...if we had done a paper survey, we never would be able to reach a variety of the population so quickly.

CEdO540 Week 2

Another week of statistics, another week of utter confusion! However, I was extremely happy to research the Capterra site. Not only was it a great resource for locating survey software, I was impressed with it's functionality! I like how you can drill down to the exact features that you're looking for. I will definitely be sharing this with my staff as part of our software purchasing process. In regard to survey software, I will be sticking with Zoomerang or Survey Monkey for my educational purposes. Many of my staff use both and have great success with ease of use and reporting capabilities.

CEdO540 Week 1

Statistics. This assignment has taught me that I am much better at reporting statistics than calculating them. I have to admit, I am totally confused. I have a pretty good understanding of mean, median and mode, but not so much with the rest of it. I'm actually at a loss as to what I should be posting in my blog, since this is probably the first time that I am speechless about the topic...simply because I don't understand it! I'm glad that we're being introduced to the topic, but I really can't wrap my head around the logistics or the process of determining stats.

On a personal note, and my groupmates agreed when we met last night, that it doesn't help my concentration any when I'm worried about the budget reform bill that is looming these last few days. If it passes, one has to wonder, is getting a master's degree in my best interest anymore if I become too expensive for the district to keep me on staff?

CEdO535 Week 6

The amount of web 2.0 tools that I learned in this class is unbelievable. This is hands down, the best class so far in the cohort. My SMART goal is to finish my library webpage using Google Site. I started it for class and added a few resources to it, but it is far from finished. I've struggled with the design, but now feel comfortable that my design will work well for students and teachers. I will prove that my goal is done by posting a link to my library website from the district's website. I will make the goal attainable by continuing to add new resources as they become available to me. As I learn new resources in this cohort, I will evaluate if they are helpful to my classroom teachers and if so, add them to my webpage. This is a realistic goal because I have designated time at the end of my day to look over my twitter and RSS feeds, which also gain me a wealth of resources to include on my website. My website will be updated on a timely basis by making the updates on Fridays, since this is my only day without having classes.

CEdO535 Week 5

The Web 2.0 app that I chose for my paper is Cybersmart at http://cybersmartcurriculum.org. I don't know if it is actually considered a web 2.0 product, but it contains links to over 90 web 2.0 tools. As a library media specialist, I have been searching for an internet safety curriculum and this one is awesome. It has interactive internet safety and cyberbullying lessons for students K-12, plus it's free! And, if you choose to download the toolbar, you are given access to more than 90 web 2.0 tools. The toolbar also has resources for professional development, best web sites for students, library resources and web searches. It is absolutely awesome and I would totally recommend it to other library media specialists.