Sunday, April 3, 2011
Another video
Here's the video I promised. My husbnd's right - I do need a haircut! Anyhow, it features my chug, Pudgie and was taped this morning by my youngest son, who's 12.
I also wanted to share a news article I just saw yesterday in the paper. Here's a link - http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/04/paterson_first-grade_teacher_s/1607/comments-4.html This article illustrates exactly what many of you mentioned in your Internet safety papers about teachers and social media. We also need to be cognizant that we are judged by what we say and do - ESPECIALLY if we are educators! What do you think about this?
Friday, March 25, 2011
Blog Topic for week of 3/25 - a video
For this week's blog post try to get a short video of yourself up on your blog. You can shoot it with pretty much anything that takes video - a digital camera that shoots video, your phone, a Flip camera or a regular video camera. Save it to your computer and then use the "add video" button in your new post window to add it to your blog. If you are unable to complete this topic be sure to post what happened on your blog by Tuesday to receive credit for the week.
Just to clarify, sometime after midnight on Friday I will read all the blogs. As I read and comment I check you off when I see a comment you made on someone else's blog. As long as your post is up by Wednesday and you have a reply up by Friday you will receive 10 pts. If either is late you receive less points.
If possible, please comment on several blogs. Some people don't get any comments, except from me, which kind of stinks for them. Share the love! THANKS!
This video is one I shot in my classroom in the fall. I'll try to get another one up tomorrow for your enjoyment. (ha-ha!)
Don't forget to send your papers to me if you haven't already done do and have a nice weekend.
Prof. Schmidt
Friday, March 18, 2011
Virtual Field Trips!
I love Virtual Field Trips and sharing them with you. By far, this week's topic is one of my favorites. There is so many good VFTs it kind of makes me want to go back to teaching a content area because I really don't get to use them. I'm always thrilled to hear when someone gets to use one with their class and love hearing about the reaction of the students. The ones I have used have been very popular.
This week you will be exploring the numerous VFT links I have for you in this week's Weekly Topic section. Choose one of your favorites to share and blog about. Don't forget about the Internet Safety opinion paper too.
For fun, try to add a picture to your blog post. I found this flower through Google, right clicked it and saved to MY PICTURES. Then I clicked on the "add image" icon in the new post and directed Blogger to upload that picture, made it small and on the left and presto-chango, there it is!
Lastly, Sunday is the first day of Spring! Hopefully, this beautiful weather continues!
Have a great weekend,
Prof. Schmidt
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Sayreville vs South Amboy vs Monroe
March 31st marks the 5 year anniversary of my moving to Monroe Township. Monroe Township is about as far south as you can get in Middlesex County, in fact our middle school has a 609 area code! Prior to moving to Monroe I lived in South Amboy a tiny town that is 1.9 squares miles, right next to Sayreville where I grew up and attended high school.
Prior to buying my house I looked at a lot of school report cards. At the time my sons were in first grade and 5th grade. I looked at whatever I could find for the district as a whole and the elementary schools but a lot of the stats for a district are based on their high schools so I looked at the high schools as well. Since I have been teaching for a while (cough, cough) I knew a few ins and outs of these report cards and knew that sometimes the figures can be decieving, but I also knew that there was a lot of information to be gained as well.
For example class size is the result of counting every student in a school and dividing it by the total number of classes. So if the school has a lot of small (usually special ed) classes it lowers the average and this does not mean your child will have classes that size. Same is true for computers - the number is simply how many students there are per computer, no information is given as to the availablilty of the computers to any group of students. Schools do specify where the computers are located, in classrooms, labs or mobile carts. If it's a choice between 1 computer in every classroom or all computers in labs, students get more use usually out of computer labs since only 1 or 2 students can work on a computer in the classroom at one time and usually the one computer is reserved for the use of the teacher.
I haven't really studied these 3 sets of report cards in a few years so I wanted to see how the statistics have changed but my last 3 attempts to access the report card section of the NJDOE site has crashed Internet Explorer so I'm not going to do that again! Instead I'll tell you what I looked at. First, I looked at the percentage of students choosing to persue their education past HS. At the time the majority of students from all 3 schools were continuing their education but South Amboy had the lowest % going to a 4 year college and Monroe had the highest. This fit in with what I knew about all 3 towns. South Amboy is the most blue collar of the three and Monroe is the most affluent. I also looked at the ratio of administrators to students, average class size and number of computers. I also checked text scores, both NJ Ask scores at the elementary schools and HSPA tests at the High Schools.
Although at the time there were little surprises about what SA scored well on but overall Monroe's data looked the best. I am not one to think that the scores and data are the end all and I think parents have a HUGE impact on how well their children do in school but I was looking for a solid district where college preparation is the norm and test scores looked ok and I didn't see any red flags. Now my sons are in 10th and 6th grades and overall, I'm happy with their education. They're both above average students, not top of the top, nor special ed. If they had been different, especially if either of them were special ed, I'd be looking for different things, like the availability of particular resources, some of which can't be determined through the school report cards. But the school report cards give you a starting point for evaluation and if you read enough of them and into them patterns emerge and things start to pop out for you. I hope you found this interesting. (Your examination of the report cards.) I really enjoy reading the comparisons, I'm sure you will too.
Prior to buying my house I looked at a lot of school report cards. At the time my sons were in first grade and 5th grade. I looked at whatever I could find for the district as a whole and the elementary schools but a lot of the stats for a district are based on their high schools so I looked at the high schools as well. Since I have been teaching for a while (cough, cough) I knew a few ins and outs of these report cards and knew that sometimes the figures can be decieving, but I also knew that there was a lot of information to be gained as well.
For example class size is the result of counting every student in a school and dividing it by the total number of classes. So if the school has a lot of small (usually special ed) classes it lowers the average and this does not mean your child will have classes that size. Same is true for computers - the number is simply how many students there are per computer, no information is given as to the availablilty of the computers to any group of students. Schools do specify where the computers are located, in classrooms, labs or mobile carts. If it's a choice between 1 computer in every classroom or all computers in labs, students get more use usually out of computer labs since only 1 or 2 students can work on a computer in the classroom at one time and usually the one computer is reserved for the use of the teacher.
I haven't really studied these 3 sets of report cards in a few years so I wanted to see how the statistics have changed but my last 3 attempts to access the report card section of the NJDOE site has crashed Internet Explorer so I'm not going to do that again! Instead I'll tell you what I looked at. First, I looked at the percentage of students choosing to persue their education past HS. At the time the majority of students from all 3 schools were continuing their education but South Amboy had the lowest % going to a 4 year college and Monroe had the highest. This fit in with what I knew about all 3 towns. South Amboy is the most blue collar of the three and Monroe is the most affluent. I also looked at the ratio of administrators to students, average class size and number of computers. I also checked text scores, both NJ Ask scores at the elementary schools and HSPA tests at the High Schools.
Although at the time there were little surprises about what SA scored well on but overall Monroe's data looked the best. I am not one to think that the scores and data are the end all and I think parents have a HUGE impact on how well their children do in school but I was looking for a solid district where college preparation is the norm and test scores looked ok and I didn't see any red flags. Now my sons are in 10th and 6th grades and overall, I'm happy with their education. They're both above average students, not top of the top, nor special ed. If they had been different, especially if either of them were special ed, I'd be looking for different things, like the availability of particular resources, some of which can't be determined through the school report cards. But the school report cards give you a starting point for evaluation and if you read enough of them and into them patterns emerge and things start to pop out for you. I hope you found this interesting. (Your examination of the report cards.) I really enjoy reading the comparisons, I'm sure you will too.
Friday, March 11, 2011
Week 2
I'm excited to see so many blogs up and the comments you have made on each other's blogs! I still haven't gotten blogs from Sharilynn and Jason so if you're reading this and wonder why I haven't put your blog on the blog list it's because I haven't gotten your email. (if this is true for you please comment below and I can track you to your blog.)
There seems to be a problem with my St. Peter's email. Or there was. A few people have sent emails and I never got them. And one person got his email returned! I just sent an email from my school account to my St. Peter's account and it went right through so I'm hoping that the problem has rectified itself.
For this week's topic we'll be focusing on Social Networking and Internet Safety but for your blog this week you'll be using last week's school report cards to compare two high schools. I used the information in the school report cards when deciding where to move 5 years ago. I'll explain more in another blog post.
There seems to be a problem with my St. Peter's email. Or there was. A few people have sent emails and I never got them. And one person got his email returned! I just sent an email from my school account to my St. Peter's account and it went right through so I'm hoping that the problem has rectified itself.
For this week's topic we'll be focusing on Social Networking and Internet Safety but for your blog this week you'll be using last week's school report cards to compare two high schools. I used the information in the school report cards when deciding where to move 5 years ago. I'll explain more in another blog post.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Welcome!
Despite some technical problems with people getting onto Blackboard or having trouble logging on, I think that our face-to-face class went well. I'm excited to get started together. I have put this week's assignments on this week's weekly topic so hopefully everyone will know what to do.
The topic for this week's blog is "INTRODUCTION." Please post an introduction on your blog and then add a picture so we can put a face to your name. Here's how:
In your dashboard choose the design tab. Click on the word gadget on the right. Choose picture and then add a picture. The one I added was from my good friend & colleague's retirement party. It's not the best picture but it was handy. (I couldn't find one of me alone.)
My introduction:
This is the 2nd time I'm teaching this course entirely online. I've been teaching it as in-person class at the South Amboy location for five years. I am also a 5th grade technology teacher in Sayreville and I am in charge of our school's website as well. I have 2 sons, 2 stepsons and a stepdaughter who keep me busy, mostly with boys' sports - basketball, baseball & golf. I enjoy digital photography a great deal and am contemplating a new lens for my DSLR to help me take better pictures during the upcoming baseball season.
I also do some staff training and development, helping teachers use technology with their classes. I really enjoy teaching adult learners, especially the reluctant learners! I always tell them if I can teach 10 year olds how to do this stuff I can teach them too. If you have any problems just shoot me an email or call.
Don't forget to set up an online place for your bookmarks/favorites (I use delicious.com) so you can save all the sites you learn about over the course of the trimester that you may want to revisit at a later date. I hope you enjoy our time together.
:-)
Prof. Schmidt
The topic for this week's blog is "INTRODUCTION." Please post an introduction on your blog and then add a picture so we can put a face to your name. Here's how:
In your dashboard choose the design tab. Click on the word gadget on the right. Choose picture and then add a picture. The one I added was from my good friend & colleague's retirement party. It's not the best picture but it was handy. (I couldn't find one of me alone.)
My introduction:
This is the 2nd time I'm teaching this course entirely online. I've been teaching it as in-person class at the South Amboy location for five years. I am also a 5th grade technology teacher in Sayreville and I am in charge of our school's website as well. I have 2 sons, 2 stepsons and a stepdaughter who keep me busy, mostly with boys' sports - basketball, baseball & golf. I enjoy digital photography a great deal and am contemplating a new lens for my DSLR to help me take better pictures during the upcoming baseball season.
I also do some staff training and development, helping teachers use technology with their classes. I really enjoy teaching adult learners, especially the reluctant learners! I always tell them if I can teach 10 year olds how to do this stuff I can teach them too. If you have any problems just shoot me an email or call.
Don't forget to set up an online place for your bookmarks/favorites (I use delicious.com) so you can save all the sites you learn about over the course of the trimester that you may want to revisit at a later date. I hope you enjoy our time together.
:-)
Prof. Schmidt
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