Having More Excel Fun 1.2

Today we learned learned how to use the IF function in Excel.  This allows us to set if/then rules within Excel.  I already had an idea on how to use this function but wanted explore it some more and I am glad I did.  A few things popped up during my use.  #1 you should always go back and check to see if your formulas are working correctly.  My guess is that Dr. Pierce set this project up because he knew where the mistakes were going to happen because many of the grades fell right on the cut off line.  One time I forgot to put an = sign in and then one time I set a value 1 point too high.  Going back and checking, I saw that 2 students had a grade of 82 but 1 had a B and the other had a C.  How could this be?? After thinking about it for a minute, I remembered that Dr Pierce said to only show whole grades so Excel automatically rounded the grades for us.  The student with the C actually had a 81.8 average.  This, IMO, exposes a problem using a computer to do our grades.  In real life, unless their was an unusual circumstance, I would have awarded this student a B or at least altered my formula for similar scenarios

Class Grade Book

I decided since I already knew a little about the IF function  to conditionally format the grade book so that anyone that had better than a B average would be highlighted in green.

This most closely uses ISTE standard 3- transferring current knowledge to new technologies.  I would also say that we could use this to communicate information to students and parents

Picasso Head

Today we made a Picasso head.   The site was very intuitive and while I was creating my work of art I was wondering how I might incorporate this in my class.  I thought that this might be a good "get to know you" activity.  I was also thinking that maybe you could have the kids make anything BUT a face.  Could we create something that somehow could connect to my Law or maybe leadership class.  It would be interesting to see what our students came up with.  I really didn't have any problems with the site that I couldn't figure out in a couple of seconds.  --New check in alert--  A problem I had with this assignment was that Picasso asked me to save and email the portrait to myself.  I never got the portrait, so I had to go back in and recreate my project (not a big deal).  Anyway, this time I just did a screen capture w/ Jing to make sure I got it.  View my Picasso





This would most closely match ISTE Standard 1-Inspire student learning and creativity

Jing Screencast

Today, I used Jing to create a digital movie without using a camera.  Jing is very intuitive to use and after fumbling with it 3 or 4 times I was able to create a usable lesson for my classroom.  One of the more difficult tasks we do in my Microsoft Office class is to create a mail merge.  We generally create individualized party invitations and address labels for our project.

Using Jing screencast was very easy.  Once you open the program you select the piece of screen you want to share.  After doing this once, my advice to you would be to select a larger piece of the screen that you think you will need.  Also, collect your thoughts before you start.  There is a 5 minute time limit for the movie.

Jing has 3 prongs.  The first prong lets you capture the portion of the screen you want to use.  The second prong is your history.  Its sort of like a folder with all screencasts in one spot.  I am hoping that we will be allowed to create folders with in the history prong.  The third prong allows you to exit Jing, get help and to set your preferences. The screen capture was saved to my pictures as an SWF file and to the history section of Jing.  I was able to upload it and in return received a URL that I can now share with anyone.

I think I might start making some of these for my wife so she doesn't keep on asking me the same question over and over again. I could never be an adult educator

Mail Merge Screencast










ISTE Standards 2 and 3.  We created a digital learning experience for our student AND also modeled modeled digital age work in a professional environment

Jing Image

Today we learned how to use Jing.  Jing  is a computer service that lets you capture basic video animation and still images and share them on the web.  It also allows you to annotate on the image you have created.  The great thing about Jing is that is allows you to capture AND annotate at the same time.  For the past few years, I have been using Greenshot to capture my images. Greenshot does not allow you to annotate and share from the same spot.  So when using Greenshot, I would capture my image, put it into a Word document and then insert shapes and text boxes to make my point. That's a lot of work!  The only negative I see with Jing (right now) is that the editing tools are somewhat limited.  Jing offered an upgrade but it was $50.  I am actually thinking about purchasing it or maybe exploring another similar screenshot service.  I am not sure if I mentioned this is in another post but I wrote a fairly popular (at least in some circles) book about football Jerry's Book.  I also speak at clinics and this would be a simple tool to enhance some of my presentations.  I am actually going to Ocean City, MD to speak this weekend.  Check out my coaching website

Here would be a sample of what I might present at a clinic

Here is my Screencast link











ISTE Standards 2 and 3.  We created a digital learning experience for our student AND also modeled modeled digital age work in a professional environment

Learning Excel

I have to say I had an advantage with this lesson.  I am lucky enough to teach a basic Microsoft Office course at my high school. We learn Word, Access, Excel and PowerPoint.  I love teaching the class because the students learn skills today that they can apply tomorrow.  My students earn certification from Microsoft if they can pass a standardized test. That being said, I really don't know a lot of the skills beyond what I teach my students.  I never had to copy formulas across different sheets so that was interesting to learn.  I don't anticipate that I will be creating excel spreadsheets to create grades for my students.  This is all done (and is required) in our grading software at school.  I am not sure if I mentioned this in previous posts, but I am a football coach at my school and use Excel to help me break down our opponents tendencies.

You can see on 3rd and 1 and 2 they ran the ball 6 times and threw it once.  They went left 4 times and right 3 times.  They went to the field 5 times and to the boundary 2 times. You get the idea

Link to my spreadsheet


ISTE 5  Engage in professional growth.  I expanded my knowledge of Microsoft Excel.  I am looking forward to learning how to use  VLOOKUP

Social Bookmarking using Diigo

I can't believe I never knew that a site like Diigo existed.  I am not a first adopter but I somewhat pride myself to at least know what is going on.  I enjoy reading and learning via a variety of media: books, on my computer, and on my smart phone.  As it happens, I just installed Pocket as a chrome extension a couple of weeks ago to save and tag websites that have interested me. Previously, I just bookmarked and tagged them.  The problem, to me, was I never could create notes for each website. I enjoy showing Ted movies to my class, but I never could really remember some of the fine points of the video so I would have to go back and either watch or read it again.  (most Ted videos have a transcript associated with it)  Now, I will be able to just highlight the relevant ideas I want to share with my class from each script.  I have also used Keep.Google.com  to organize some of my thoughts. This is a great tool for list making but doesn't really do the job I needed it to do for websites.  Diigo will also help me keep track of things that interest me in my personal life. Interestingly, it seems that I have started using Twitter as a news gathering place for me.  I have been reading interesting articles that friends and acquaintances retweet.  I am also able to follow a variety of news outlets that interest me on Twitter.  News, sports, education, technology, money etc.  Its like having my own personal newspaper on my phone.  Now I will be able to see and read what other people have thought about a particular website they have visited

Here is a screenshot of my books mark bar.  What a mess!

As you can see, I have only some of my TED talks here.  What do they contain? How are they similar?  Can a couple be part of a unit?  You get the idea
















Here is a sample of what Pocket looks like

You can see I have a football site, a site for my business law class, and a TED talk.  I am able to tag them but I still do not know what is inside.







Another great aspect of Diigo is to not only be able to highlight and save annotations from a website, but SHARE them with like minded people.

Here is a sample of my new Diigo account.  You can see I have the webite, an annotation and a note a created for myself..Pretty cool

I think this activity most closely matches ISTE Standard 1 (Facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity) because this will help us facilitate learning in our classroom.  Students will be able to collaborate on different ideas.  I feel learning is done best when students can help and discuss ideas with each other

Creating Jeopardy in a blizzard

I have decided to use my time during the blizzard to get ahead in my schoolwork

I created a Jeopardy Game for my upcoming Business Law class







I have used Jeopardy games before in the past but used a PowerPoint template as its platform.  This is sooo much easier to use.  I always like to have my students make the game in teams of two or three and then I select a game for the whole class to play.  This program is going to make my life easier as I generally had to spend about 50% of my time teaching and helping the kids use the PowerPoint program.  Now, I will be able to spend more of my time helping the students think of better "answers" for their Jeopardy games.  I would like to know  how to make the game more visually attractive for the kids.  It would be fun to be able to insert Daily Doubles and maybe embed a video like they do on TV.

I plan to share my link with other Business Law teachers in our county.  They will have to change the last column as I have made that specific to my high school.

Word Clouds

Today I learned a new way to use word clouds and their many different applications.  I have only used Wordle in my classes and was having trouble with it because, as Dr. Pierce said, it doesn't play well with Chrome. I like having my students use word clouds at the beginning of the semester in order for me to get to know them and for them to get to know each other.  I hang the word clouds on our classroom walls.  Here is an example of one of my students word clouds.

I decided, for my project, to create a word cloud for the Microsoft Office competencies my students need to master to be professionally certified in Word. 

The Word clouds make it very easy to see that we will be doing a lot of inserting, creating, formatting and modifying of text.  I will be teaching a unit on ethics next semester in my Business Law class.  I plan to have my students copy and paste text into a word cloud program in order to see which words appear most.  I also will be still be doing our "Get to Know You" word cloud.

I would like to know how other teachers use word clouds in their classroom.


I guess I am a history teacher in a business teacher's suit.  Here is the Gettysburg Address.  I just couldn't resist

Learning Styles

Hypothesis:
I am a read/write and kinesthetic learner.  I learn best when I read then write about what I have learned.  As a young child, I have loved reading.  I vividly remember reading the World Book Encyclopedia when I was a kid.  I think that was before the term "nerd" was invented. Interestingly, for some reason, I used to hate writing.  Now that I am an adult, I enjoy writing and have written a book that is popular in football land.  Jerry's Book.  I also learn kinesthectically, watching video, using case study, practice and application.  My teaching/coaching model has always been: see it, say it, do it, teach it.

Analyze:
The results of my test matched my hypothesis I scored read/write 10, kinesthetic 8, aural 6, and visual 4.  I think the hypothesis that suggests we should teach to learning styles, is widely accepted because it is sometimes true. A broken clock is right twice a day.  As the article states, we like to categorize and put things  in boxes.  That being said, I think the point is that we need to vary our instruction to meet the needs of our students.  For instance, my survey showed, that being a visual learner ranked last for me.  Although this might be true, I still CAN learn using visual methods.

Pasher suggests that we need carefully controlled true experiments with identical outcome measures for all students.  We need educational and training scientists to conduct this research.

Students do have learning preferences, I think it is up to us as educators to find what works best for our students. "Students do not care how much you know until they know how much you care"  is an old cliche. This is not a learning style and I do not know how you would scientifically measure it but I do know it can be effective

Top Free Tools

I looked through many of the blogs and really could not find any tools that I use.  There was one blog that I do follow and that was Edutopia.com

Tools That I use:
Teacherweb.com ($40)  I have been using TeacherWed on a daily basis for over 10 years.  Since I teach 5 different preps, its a great way to keep my classes organized from year to year

Classflow.com.  I use this almost on a daily basis to check understanding within the class.  The kids seem to like it

PollEverwhere.com  I like to use this to gather information about what I am about to teach.  I also like to use this for a bellringer

Forms.google.com I like to use this at the beginning of the year to gather home information like emails and cell phone numbers that are often incorrect or outdated in the school database

Ed.ted.com  Ted Ed has wonderful lessons connected to Ted videos that are created by other teachers. The platform also makes it easy to modify a current lesson or create your own from scratch.

Blogs I follow:
Edutopia.com

Google for Education


You can create your on reading list of blogs right in your blogger account

Just Click on the add button and copy/paste your URL in and voila it puts all the blogs you want to read in one place

Blogger 2

1. Who is the audience and community? What is being presented? How might comments be used, who can/should/ comment?

Our audience and community for this blog is two-fold:

The first audience is all the other students in our class. We are taking a collective journey together learning how to use technology, not for technology sake, but to use it as a tool in our classroom. I always like to say, I have learned more from other teachers than I have ever learned in a classroom environment.

Second, I will be using the blog to crystallize technology ideas that I have in my head. I am currently using technology to check for understanding in my class, but it seems haphazard. I am also planning on showing my blog to other teachers in my building that I know are always looking for technology ideas.

We will be presenting what we have learned and reflected upon to each other. I am guessing that Dr. Pierce, as our professor, will be using our blogs to access and guide our understanding and usage of technology.

I am hoping, as a learning community, that we will all be commenting on each others websites. I am thinking about actually showing my website to my classes at some point and maybe have them comment on it from a student's perspective.

What I found most intriguing about the article was the comments about loneliness, and feeling connected. I belong to a couple of football forums and know that blogs can create community of others from around the world.

2. 

Please discuss how these activities fit into 4 domains of blogging in the first article. How does ‘reflect’ and ‘share’ fit into  the blogging domains from #1?

We read, write and reflect for ourselves. We try to deepen our understanding about the subject we are trying to learn or teach. In my opinion, writing could include other media examples. Sometimes, it is easier just to show a two minute video or a infographic about a subject to convey a thought.

Comments to me, are the KEY in a successful blog. if used correctly, it is here that you can receive constructive criticism, different ways of looking at a problem and different ways to move forward

Classroom: My leadership class is required to write a daily learning log. Some are great while others are not so well written. I am wondering if we blog our learning logs, #1 can the blogs remain anonymous to others students but not to me. I am thinking that I could have my students just blog under their student number. Will the students still share their personal experiences in public even if anonymously.

#2 will the students "copy" their feelings from other students into their personal log

It's interesting to me that I have come back and edited both of my blog posts after I "finished" blogging. Both times, thoughts have "popped" into my head while doing other things

Jerry Gordon Intro

Hi Folks,

My name is Jerry Gordon.  I am a business teacher at Broad Run HS in Ashburn VA.
I teach a variety of courses. Check out my class agenda

I am also a football coach there and maintain a football website

I had a little trouble starting my blog because my Google interface was a little different than Dr.Pierce's.  I was able to fumble around with it for a little bit to figure it out.    I have used Google Docs before (spreadsheets, forms, slides)  so if anyone needs some help, either comment on my blog or you can email me at jgordon0508@yahoo.com

I want to use this in my leadership class and would like to know if students can respond to each other via blog posts