Millennial Score

For this final assignment, we took a Millennial quiz to compare ourselves with other members of the Millennial generation. It turns out, my Millennial score is 86, which means I have a lot in common with others.

Where are you in terms of the Frand’s 10 characteristics of the information-age mind set. List the 10 characteristics and report where you are for each one.

1. Computers aren't technology.
       I think computers are definitely technology.

2. Internet Better than TV.
       Overall I agree that internet is better than TV, especially since you can watch TV on the internet.

3. Reality no longer real.
     I would am inclined to agree with this statement. Technology can be used to change any type of communication, picture, voice, and/or video. You never know what to believe anymore.
 
4. Doing rather than knowing.
    I agree. Nowadays, having experience is way more important than simply having a college degree. It's hard for a lot of college graduates to find entry level jobs for this very reason.
 
5. Nintendo over logic.
    I totally do this. When I begin using a new software, I play around with it to see what I can figure out for myself before I open any sort of instruction manual or guide. 

6. Multitasking way of life.
   If I couldn't multitask I would get fired!  For me, like many others, multitasking is a job requirement.

7. Typing rather than handwriting.
    I would most certainly prefer to type rather than write. Over the years, my handwriting has become worse and I barely remember how to write in cursive.  

8. Staying connected.
    I always have to be connected. I check my Facebook several times a day at work and I'm always texting back and forth with my friends, however I seldom talk on the phone. 

9. Zero tolerance for delays. 
    I can hardly believe that several years ago I used dial-up internet. I can't imagine what my job would be like if the internet was slow or if I always had to wait for information. 
 
10. Consumer/creator blurring.   
    I agree with this and I think it's really sad. I honestly believe it is extremely important to give credit to the creator of anything you "borrow" or "steal" online but people rarely do anymore. I'm just thankful they have so many plagiarism detectors out there. Otherwise, my job as a future English teacher would be even more difficult! The sad part is, students typically don't understand why it is bad to copy/paste someone else's work and they have a hard time understanding what plagiarism even is, let alone why they shouldn't do it. 

Voki

For this assignment we used Microsoft Word to write a short, 85 word introduction and used Voki to create a personal avatar for delivery. Click here to view my introduction on Google Docs.Voki is a really cool way to deliver information and make online presentations more personal and realistic. In mine, I was being silly by choosing a Christmas turkey, but if I wanted to I could create an avatar to look and sound just like me. I can see why many online training modules use avatars to train teachers, since the creator can make them look and act like real people.

Click here  to view my Voki or watch it on the player above.

Wordle

For this assignment we learned to create word clouds using a website called Wordle. One way in which word clouds could be useful is to summarize data as the examples show below. Be sure to click on the images to link to a bigger version.

   

This image is a word cloud of the NETS-T standards of the year 2000. By taking a quick look at this word cloud, you can see the main points of the standards and form a quick understanding as to what they are about. For example, at just a glance you can see a few of the main points of the standards are "technology" and "resources." 

The NETS standards of 2008 are similar to the 2000 standards, but they seem to emphasize creativity and innovative thinking more than the earlier version. Since much of the language is the same in the standards, the word cloud below is very similar to the previous one.




With all of the different layouts and settings to choose from in Wordle, so you can make your word clouds easy to view and fun to create. I played around with the settings and ended up choosing a mixture of both vertical and horizontal layouts to make my word clouds stand out.

I think Wordle would be fun to use in my classroom because I could use it to help students find important parts of a story or text like we did with the NETS standards above. In my example below, I used it for a character analysis of one of the character's in Kurt Vonnegut's short story, "Harrison Bergeron." This activity could be fun for students and they could print them out and keep them to help them remember certain qualities of particular characters in a story we are reading.

 

This activity would touch on many different NETS Standards because I would be incorporating technology into the classroom to enhance student learning and promote innovative thinking. Students would create original summaries of their characters and use technology to turn the summaries into fun word clouds to help with their reading and interpretation of the text.

Carpe Diem

Tonight I watched a Webinar on the use of technology in the classroom and the technological advance we will see in the near future. Dr. Soloway, the speaker in the presentation, compared two different schools and explained how they used technology to teach students. In one school, Carpe Diem, students spent half of the day on computers being drilled with information, while in another school, St. Mary's, students carried around mobile devices and were engaged in hands-on learning.  Dr. Soloway pointed out that Carpe Diem's "teaching" has resulted in higher test scores, but does that mean students are actually learning and understanding the material? For some learners, that could be the case. For others, they may need a more "learn while doing" or "hands-on" type of approach, and that is hard to get while being stuck in front of a computer all day. Just because you are able to retain information long enough to take a test, does not mean that you actually learned it.

I think schools need to implement technology into classrooms, but I don't think teachers should be focused only on technology because it may not be fitting for every every single situation or learning style. Technology is a great tool when used appropriately, but there can also be negative impacts. For example, technology makes cheating easier and it could be more distracting than helpful in a classroom with many students. Also, as in the case of Carpe Diem education, it could take away from social interaction, which is a very important aspect of education. Students need to learn how to work with each other as part of a team, and although collaborative work can be done online, working out issues face-to-face and daily conversations enhances social skills and prepares students for the real world.

In terms of cheating, I specifically think of my classroom as an English teacher and how technology could affect student learning. For example, let's say I gave my students an assignment to read part of The Scarlet Letter. The purpose of this assignment wouldn't necessarily be to learn how the story goes and memorize the plot, but to build reading comprehension and think about important themes and characters. Without giving this assignment any thought at all, students could quickly go online and in about five clicks they could find a plot summary, important themes, and character descriptions. Enough to fake a teacher, anyway. Now, what would that teach a student? Nothing. Without any original thought, they would quickly forget the book and the themes and they would walk away from this assignment having learned nothing and feeling as though they "won." I know these types of things will happen, so that's why I'm a big fan of reading books in class and not giving take home reading assignments. That way, I can monitor original thought and give impromptu class discussion topics that we can work through together.

The sad truth of it is, my example above is one of many that teachers now have to think about when giving an assignment. It's a wonderful thing that so much information is available to us through a few clicks of a mouse, but it can also be harmful because of the shortcut approach many students take to learning. I fear that bringing in mobile learning devices will only enhance the opportunities for students to become distracted and cheat their way through their education. However, if mobile devices are going to be used, I would like to see Ipads above any type of smartphone because of the size. I think they would be easier for students to view, easier for teachers to see (as opposed to students sneaking out a smartphone during a test), and I believe they have more capabilities.

On the bright side, technology definitely provides many great learning opportunities for students and every school should have a supply of technological devices available for students at all times. In my English classroom, laptops will be used to type papers and gather research; and, Powerpoint and/or Prezi could be used to present an oral presentation. Technology is growing in society, therefore it should be growing in the classroom. One purpose of education is to prepare students for the real world, so why shouldn't we teach them about technology inside the walls of our school since they will be immersed in it the moment they leave school grounds?

Excel T Test

For this assignment I performed a T Test on data we collected from NCES in our last assignment using Microsoft Excel. I still used the 4th grade reading criteria provided on NCES, but this time I focused on the male/female aspect of the measurement to see if gender made a difference in reading scores.  After performing the T Test and finding the P Value to be greater than .05 as shown below, I concluded that gender does not impact 4th grade reading performance and therefore I "failed to reject the null hypothesis." Even though there is a distinct difference between the scores of males and females, there are many factors to be considered within the comparison, not just gender.

To view the entire file instead of the image above, click here. 

When would I use it? To be honest, I think this test is very confusing and I can't see myself using it in my classroom. I have trouble understanding it at a graduate level, let alone trying to implement it into an activity for middle school or high school students. Perhaps my feelings will change if I come across it again and learn about it more in depth, but this is the first time I've come across it and even after Googling multiple websites I have trouble comprehending the concept.

I can see the test being useful in a math or science class, or for teachers and administration, but I can't really think of when I would ever have my students use it in an English classroom (unless they would want to incorporate it into a research paper to compare two types of data).

Excel: NCES Chart

For this assignment, I used state reading statistics provided by NCES to create an excel spreadsheet and a scatter plot. First, I selected my search criteria from the choices NCES provides to the public. As shown in the image below, I selected 4th grade, reading, and gender as my comparison criteria.

After the chart was generated, I downloaded it and exported it to an excel file. In excel, I computed descriptive statistics for the total score, sorted the spreadsheet by totals, and created a scatter pot with my findings as shown below.

 

As shown in the scatter plot above, Virginia was ranked 9th in 2011 in terms of reading scores. We are six points above average with 41 states behind us. I think it's absolutely wonderful that we are ranked so high and I can't wait to see the 2012 comparisons to see if we climbed the charts!

Google Site

For this assignment, we were to create a website using Google Sites. Instead of creating a new site from scratch, I decided to use this opportunity to edit and revise my Teacher Portfolio because I will be using it to send to employers soon. I created my online portfolio a few years ago, but back then I wasn't nearly as knowledgeable about technology and how URLs and pages worked. This time, I was able to change fonts and colors, and create links to view my blog and my resume on Google Docs. I am really excited to be able to share this blog with future employers, because I think it is a great way to demonstrate my capabilities as a teacher and as a learner.

I had fun exploring Google Sites, but I must say that I feel it is pretty limited as far as web pages go. There were some things I wanted to change that I simply couldn't because of layout restrictions. For example, I wanted to make the text of my site title bigger, but it wouldn't let me unless I agreed to use a two row title (even though there is plenty of room to stretch it our horizontally). It's obviously not a big deal, but I do think appearance matters and it's aggravating when simple changes are prohibited. I like Blogger a lot better than I like Google sites because of the freedom and how easy it is to use.

I think this assignment best represents NETS standards 3 and 5. NETS standard three is represented because I am exhibiting knowledge of a digital society and using technology as a tool for professional growth. Nets standard five is represented because I'm improving my professional practice by creating an online Portfolio, which demonstrates the effective use of electronic tools.

RubiStar

For this assignment, I created an online rubric using a website called RubiStar. Rubrics are extremely challenging to create because you have to make sure you consider all aspects of the assignment. Not only do you have to make sure you acknowledge all of the different requirements on the rubric, but you also have to create a fair grading scale for missing parts. I think that's the hardest part. For example, in the rubric I created using RubiStar, I would have had a hard time determining when students should get a 4, 3, 2, or 1, but the website filled in the choices for me as soon as I chose a category. It was so quick! They also give you the option of changing the wording of the categories they suggest, if you'd like to be more specific in your criterion.

After you create a rubric on Rubistar, you can save it to their website for storage, save it to your computer, or print a hard copy. You can choose if you want to save the file temporarily or permanently and then go back in to edit it whenever you need to. I will DEFINITELY be using this website in the future.

Google Forms: Self-grading Quiz

For this assignment, I created a quiz using Google Forms and learned how to apply formulas to allow it to grade itself. After creating five test questions, I selected the first empty cell to the right of the questions in row one, and inserted the formula (=IF(B3=B$2, 100,0)). Rather than having to repeat the formula for each row per student, I simply dragged it to the empty cells. This formula creates a "grade" for each cell (basically informing me if the answer is right or wrong) but it does not give me a total average. To find the average of all of the answers per student, I used the formula (=SUM(I3:M3)/5) and inserted it to the empty spaces to the right of the other formula. The formulas will make more sense after you view my spreadsheet.

I am SO happy I learned how to do this, because it will save a lot of time only having to plug in one formula as opposed to manually grading several quizzes. The only obstacle I can foresee is not having enough laptops for every student to take the quiz. However, I like being able to implement technology whenever I can, and if I can find a way to make quizzes even a little interesting for students, I'm all about it. Not to mention the time saving aspects since they would be self graded.

To test your knowledge on basic sonnet forms, click here or take the quiz below!

Google Forms

For this assignment, I used Google Forms to create a survey that I could present to students during my student teaching internship. Google forms is a really efficient program because once users fill out the form, it automatically sends you their information and adds it to a compiled spreadsheet. As the overview video points out, the days of having to email everyone and then manually compile the feedback are over. The form provides the creator with a variety of question types (multiple choice, list, text, grid, scale, etc...) so you can turn the form into whatever you want it to be. It could be one big grid of information, or it could be an online quiz that would automatically record students' answers. I liked the idea of using it as a survey because students could fill it out at home on their own time, and choose whether or not they wanted to submit it anonymously or not. Many times, when you ask someone to share their honest opinions and criticisms, they are worried about anonymity. This type of virtual survey would eliminate that fear, not to mention it is a lot quicker for them to fill out.

In my survey, I asked students questions about myself as a student teacher, and about the class in general. I included one example of each question type, and chose a literary theme as the background. You can view the survey I created here, or view it below.




I asked a few of my family members to fill out the form so that I could see what happens when I get the feedback, and I was really impressed by how fast Google sent me their responses. Once they clicked "submit" at the bottom of the survey, Google Forms compiled the information in a spreadsheet that looks like this.This makes the form extremely easy to manage and keep track of the information. There are multiple views, but I personally like the "summary view" the best because it would be the most useful to quickly summarize students' information. Every student's answer is important, but if you just want to see majority votes/opinions, the pie charts and summarized information in this view are very helpful.

Now that I know about this form, I can see myself using it all of the time for both students and parents. One of my peers had the idea of using this form to gather guardian contact information, and I thought that was a great idea. It would be really quick for parents to fill out and I wouldn't have to worry about the form getting home to them to sign. There are many ways to share the form with others since it's just a matter of sending a link, so I could email it to them like I did to my mom and brother, or I could set up a class blog similar to this one and embed it like I did above. As long as I make my docs public, anyone has access to view them without being a Google user.

I'm so glad we did this activity!

Prezi

For this assignment, I created a presentation using a program called Prezi. Prezi is a presentation software like Microsoft PowerPoint, except it's completely different. One major difference is how Prezi uses a blank canvas instead of slides. As I was creating my presentation, this was one of the hardest adjustments for me because I kept feeling like all of my presentation material was disorganized. However, on the other hand, this feature allows Prezi to deliver more powerful presentations because you have a lot more freedom with the way you present the material.

Another big difference between Prezi and PowerPoint is how the slides are ordered in the actual presentation. Since PowerPoint uses a "slide" approach, the slides are easily numbered and the presentation presents itself chronologically per slide. I must admit, I really missed this feature as I was building my presentation and it made me realize that I take it for granted every time I present in PowerPoint. In Prezi, there are no slides so you create "paths" that connect each of your points in the order you want them shown. I believe it sounds easier than it is. At first I was going through and dragging the paths from point to point, but Prezi kept messing up the order and zooming in too far so it was throwing off my presentation. I couldn't find any information on how to correct the zoom, after many tutorials and forums. I was getting REALLY aggravated until I realized that I could position the information on my screen exactly how I wanted it, and choose to add my current view as my path instead of having the drag the cursor to each point. This made me really happy. At the end of the day, all of my hard work turned into this presentation. You can also check it out below.

Why is English class important? on Prezi

All in all, Prezi is a really cool program and you can create a presentation with a lot of impact, but you better have loads of time do it. I could be saying this because I'm not as familiar with Prezi (this was my first time ever hearing of it) as PowerPoint, but I do think that all of the tools, frames, zooming, and paths take a ton of time to get used to and it would take a lot of practice to create a truly powerful presentation like the ones in the video examples. Sometimes too much freedom can be a bad thing, or at least for me. PowerPoint has a lot of capabilities, I love the way it's organized, and I think it's much easier to use.

In my opinion, this assignment touches on all five NETS standards. Using and sharing this program with my students would expand our technology skills, while promoting critical thinking and inventiveness. By designing a presentation using this contemporary tool, I would also be exposing students to innovative technology and helping them grow as learners. Throughout my presentation I would exhibit legal and ethical behavior, and ask students to do the same if they used the tool to present information. Since this type of assignment entails so much, it could easily fall under each point of the NETS standards.

PhotoStory

For this assignment I created a presentation using Microsoft PhotoStory. PhotoStory is just what it sounds like; it allows you to use your pictures to tell a story. The program provides many options to customize the pictures, and you can even turn your story into an educational lesson by combining it with Microsoft PowerPoint like I did below.





For this assignment I took our Google Maps activity and created a "part two" so to speak, by creating a visual itinerary of some of the literary sites we would see when touring Massachusetts. First, I created a PowerPoint presentation of images representing each literary landmark. I saved the files as .JPEG files and transferred them to PhotoStory where I created voice narration for each slide. One of the many advantages of PhotoStory is the option to set a timer for each slide to keep presentations brief. With the twenty second timer set, I narrated the history of each image/slide. Once I finished creating my PhotoStory, I uploaded the movie to Youtube so I could embed it into this blogpost and obtain a URL to share with the public.

I thought this activity was really difficult and time consuming, but I'm glad that I did it because I learned a lot about videos and embedding, which are two subjects I didn't know anything about prior to this. For me, one of the hardest parts was figuring out to embed this video into my blog, even after I read many online tutorials. I switched the view to HTML, but despite what all of the tutorials said, you do not simply "copy and paste" (or at least that didn't work for me). You still have to know a bit about actual HTML codes to get it to work, because I figured out that it only works after putting "< br /> " before and after the video, which none of the tutorials told me. Oh well, now I know!

Powerpoint Presentation

For today's activity I created a presentation on sonnets using Microsoft Powerpoint. This presentation would be given to a 9th grade English class and they would have various handouts and notes to accompany the presentation. This activity was really fun for me because I enjoy creating fun and interactive lessons (probably because I haven't begun teaching yet so I don't have to do it on an everyday basis- hehe). I am usually bad about making my presentations wordy, so this time I really focused on images, videos, and succinct language. This is the first presentation I have made using videos and audio clips for effect. I am really proud of how it turned out because I don't think students would find it as boring as most presentations, but I know I'll get better as I get feedback from students and adapt my teaching to their learning needs.

After I created the presentation using Microsoft Powerpoint, I used the drag & drop method to put the file into my public Dropbox folder. Even though I've used Dropbox for over a year now, I have never used the "public folder" feature until now because I've never needed to. However, I think it's extremely useful and now that I have learned how it works I can see myself using it a lot more often. I use Dropbox on a daily basis for just about everything because I do work on various laptops and it allows me to have access to all of my files from any computer. I'm excited to have learned about another feature of the program.

Google Earth

For today's assignment, we uploaded our Google Map activity into Google Earth to compare both programs.  In the Google Map activity, I created a literary tour of Massachusetts which showed a map full of pinpoints of various literary sites in MA as seen below.

For this activity, I uploaded the tour map into Google Earth by saving it to a KML file (a file made specifically for earth viewing software) and was able to view the actual places on the map in great detail as shown here or in the picture below.

In the picture above, you can't see as much detail because I took a screenshot of the entire map, but if you zoom in closely to one location you are able to view the site with much more detail. Check out the example below of the Longfellow Home and Historic Site.

In this activity, I was most excited to learn about the Google for Educators website that provides lesson plans and activities for Google apps. However, when I tried to find activities for Google Earth that pertained to the language arts field, I couldn't find any results.

Even though the website didn't provide any Google Earth ideas for my classroom, I still think it would be really useful for other Google Apps, like Google Docs.

Google Maps

 For this activity we used Google Maps to create a field trip for students. I have always wanted to do a literary tour of Massachusetts, so I decided to pretend like I was going to take my class on the same trip. I had a lot of fun scouting out places I would like to visit, and who knows- maybe I really will get to take my students on this field trip one day!

 First, I created an overview of the trip in Google Docs, then I embedded a picture of the map I created into the document using Jing. I also uploaded my map to the web, which you can view here.

 

I think students would have a lot of fun using Google Maps in the classroom. One activity I could assign is to have them research an author and create a map of some historical sites relating to their author. This activity would make research fun and interactive, and it might provide some insight into the works of the selected author. For example, if a student chose Sylvia Plath they could map out where she was born, where she lived, where she went to school, and maybe even some of her favorite hang out spots. This information would give the student a lot of insight into her work and they could store it in a fun map and present it to the class. It would be a lot more interactive than writing an essay and it's nice having options while exposing them to the world of technology!

I really enjoyed this activity and I can see myself using Google Maps to plan my future trips. I've always passively used it to get directions, but I've never created a map myself before. Very cool!

Batchgeo

For this assignment, we used Batchgeo to map the locations of every peer in our class. First, we compiled our names and addresses into a shared Google document, and then the next day we copied/pasted everyone's information into Batchgeo. Batchgeo then generated a map based on the information we submitted, and displayed all of our locations. To view the map of our class click here or see below.

  I had difficulty using the html code provided by Batchgeo, so I used Jing to embed the map in my blogpost. I will have to play around with html codes to try and figure out how to embed them into my blog, and once I do I will come back and add the code into this post. 


I think this activity would be a lot of fun for students, but I honestly can't think of many ways I would use it for any real purpose in my English classroom. Maps are always fun to view and students could input their information and that of their favorite authors, but I'm not sure what they would actually "learn" from it. Students could also input addresses of characters in books they are reading about, if that information is provided, so that they could get a better feel for the setting of the text. However, most settings are just general areas around the world.  There are some books that give specifics and for those books this tool would be really cool to use. Overall, I think Batchgeo would hold more entertainment value than actual learning value in my classroom. I'm usually great at thinking outside the box, but I really can't come up with much more than what I listed above, and that's not really enough for me to be excited about. Geography teachers must be thrilled, though!

Jing Video

Summary

As I mentioned in my previous post, Jing has many more capabilities than the Snipping Tool. One such capability is the option to create a short video (up to five minutes in length). For this assignment, we used Jing to create a short instructional video that teaches students or parents how to perform a task on the computer.  In my example, I created a screencast to teach students how to cite a source using a website called Son of a Citation Machine. I think this video would be really helpful to students because many of them don’t even know that this website is out there for them to use. I know many teachers insist on teaching them how to create citations manually so that they are able to create them on their own without assistance, but to be honest I don’t really buy into that type of thinking. I got through college as an English major solely relying on this tool and it has never let me down. I think it is important to know the basics of citing a source, but why spend tons of time teaching students how to do something that you can simply input to a website to get accurate results in less than a minute? I would rather ensure that they know of a solid resource to use for citing a source accurately, than rely on them to remember the order of citing a textbook, novel, journal article, and podcast in both APA and MLA format. Technology is out there to be used and it seems to be growing more and more popular every generation (my 1.5 year old niece knows how to use an IPAD) so I think it is important to provide technological tools to our students so that they know what resources they have available to them. 

What I did

Creating the screencast video was just as easy as capturing a snapshot of my screen. The first step I took to create my screencast was selecting the perimeter of my video. With Jing, you take pictures and create videos of information that is shown on your screen, so you can set the perimeter to whatever size you want to meet your needs. For this task, I selected the whole screen so that I could show students how to use the entire webpage. After I selected the perimeter, I clicked on the “capture video” button and it gave me a countdown before my video started recording. After I was finished recording, I clicked “finish” and the movie ended. At that point it gave me options to save, upload to Screencast.com, replay, or discard my video. I saved a copy to my computer (they are saved as SWF files), and uploaded it via Screencast.com to share with you. You can take a look at my video here.

The Jing Sun has three prongs, one of which is a history tab that saves all of the images and videos you create. If you don’t upload your video or save it, this prong stores the information for you so you can access it at a later time. However, I’m not sure if I did something incorrectly, but I was not able to access my history from one computer to another, which was very frustrating. I logged into my Jing account at work and created my video and then when I logged into my account on my home computer the file was not there. So I don’t think the Jing history lets you access your images/videos from multiple computers- unless I’m wrong. Ha! The other two prongs are Capture, and More. Capture is the prong you choose to take images and/or videos, and More is where you send feedback or change your preferences. 

How I Use it

I think it is really useful to be able to upload videos to Screencast.com because you can send the link to anyone to view it. This will be extremely useful in my classroom because I could simply post the link to my classroom website so students have access to the information any time they want. At my current job, I spread the word of Jing to my coworkers and we are going to start making video tutorials teaching users how to create Purchase Orders and Requisitions for government orders. No more guiding people via telephone and taking a guess at what they are looking at on their screens. Now we can upload a simple tutorial for everyone to see. They love that I’m taking a technology course!

NETS Standards

This activity represents NETS standards One, Two, and Three because I would be using technology to facilitate student learning, to exhibit knowledge of a digital society, and to design a digital learning experience.  I could teach students how to manually create source citations using worksheets, but incorporating screencasts into my lesson plans is more efficient, and I can upload the links online so students can access the tutorials whenever they need to.

Jing Image

Summary

Using Jing is a lot like using the Snipping Tool, except there are many more features. One of the features I like best is being able to include readable text boxes within the image you save. This allows for clear comments and easy instruction. Another feature I really like that the Snipping Tool doesn't provide is being able to screen cast your image to share it with other users. This is really useful because you can send a link to share the screencast with multiple people at once. Therefore, while the Snipping Tool is useful and already available on most computers without having to install anything, Jing has a lot better features and more capabilities.

What I did / How I would use it

For this assignment we were instructed to find a graphic online that we could use in our classrooms, and use Jing to share the graphic on our blogs. I decided this tool would be really useful to use when introducing poetry to my students because of the comment and highlight features. For example, sonnet forms can be hard for students to learn, and being able to go to a website and find examples to quickly mark for students would be extremely useful. Here is an example of a sonnet that I marked up for them: 

As you can see, the highlighting tool was really helpful because it allowed me to separate the sonnet into sections, and I used the arrows and text boxes for my comments. It would be easy for me to do the same thing on a Powerpoint presentation, but that takes time and planning. This tool is useful for spur of the moment examples, when students are having difficulty grasping a concept. If they don't understand the examples I provided in my lecture, I can just hop on the web and Google a sonnet example to show them like the one above. Taking it a step further, we could mark up a sonnet together as a class and I could post the link to our example on the class website for them to view using the Screencast feature. It's not as easy to do that with Powerpoint! Here is an example of my Screencast.

NETS Standards

This activity is directly related to NETS standard number two because I would be using online resources to maximize student learning. Using the internet allows me to show students multiple examples, and using Jing helps me facilitate their learning by adding comments, organizing the information, and making the information available outside of the classroom using the Screencast feature.