Dr. Z Responds to Questions on Digital Portfolios

I was honored to be asked by some of my students to create a podcast about digital portfolios for a project they are doing. They are creating digital video interviews with a few other folks including Dr. Ana Donaldson. I suppose they wanted me to do this in a medium that I have been using lately.

You will find a link to the 6 minute podcast at the end of this posting.

Here are a couple of the links that I mentioned in the podcast:

Electronic Professional Teaching Portfolio Website
http://www.leighzeitz.com/eptp

Digital Portfolios Made Easy
http://www.uni.edu/ashworth/dpme

Here is the link to the podcast:
http://coe3.coe.uni.edu/~zeitz/podcasts/portfolio.podcast.mp3

Day 4 - "Using Databases in Education" Summer

We began discussing some Educational Technology organizations:

Iowa Technology and Education Connection (ITEC)
Conference: Des Moines, Iowa (October 8 - 10, 2006)

International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE)
Conference: Atlanta, Georgia (June 24 - 27, 2007)

Association for Educational and Communication Technology (AECT)
Conference: Dallas, Texas (October 10 - 14, 2006)

Today we explored various databased websites on the web that provide the current "Read/Write Web" that we enjoy.

These are some of the websites we explored:

del.icio.us

youtube.com

facebook.com

These came from Sherri:

opensource.com

openoffice.com

We also explored podcasts. Dr. Z described what they were. We used iTunes to explore some of the offerings of podcasts. We even created our own audio recordings that could be turned into podcasts. Everyone created their own blogs on Blogger.com.

While I didn't record this class, I am linking to a previous presentation of "Podcasting in the Classroom."

This is actually a link to another of my blogs that has all of the resouces discussed in the presentations actually linked to the blog posting.

Dr. Z Reflects: Podcasting Workshop for Carver Fellows

I hope this was useful.

Z

Day 3 of "Using Databases in Education" - Sum '06

Just another day in Paradise.

Today we had the Name Tent competition. We had a tie for 1st place. The winners were Sarah Ling and Sherri Neofotist. What creativity!!!

Today we reviewed our future plans:

Tomorrow, Thursday, we will meet in SEC 127.
We will explore del.icio.us and other Web databases.
Due to popular requests we will learn about Blogging and Podcasting
(Come with a topic that you want to share with your students)

We will then have a week where we will stay home and work at home on these activities.

During the week of June 26 - 29, we will meet in the lab of ITTC.
I will meet you there at 1:00 PM. A contingent of students said that they would know where to go and they would meet outside the Union at 12:50 so that they can then walk over to the ITTC.

We will have guest speakers to tell us about how they use data to improve their schools.
On Monday, June 26, (Craig Barnum from Prairie High School.)
On Tuesday, June 27, we will hear from Aaron Spurr from Price Lab School.

They will present from 4:00 - 5:00 and then we will take the speaker to dinner. Hope that you can join us.

We reviewed the Expanded Personal Database Assignment.

Eric and Courtney lead a wonderful presentation on the article they reviewed "10 Essential Elements."

We completed the Chapter 3 discusssion and then reviewed the school data from Chapter 4 of our book. It brought a great deal of insightful discussion.

We finished with spending some time working on Access projects.

The audio track will be uploaded by classtime tomorrow.

Websites discussed in class today:

ITEC (Iowa Technology and Education Connection) This is the primary educational organization in Iowa for using technology to support learning. There is a great conference in Des Moines every October. You should really go to visit it.

Day 2 of "Using Databases in Education" - Summer 06

On our second day of face-to-face learning in this class, we accomplished a number of things:

Began by demonstrating this Using Databases in Education blog. Also demonstrated the audio podcast of Day 1. The students asked to learn more about podcasting and I will probably do it on Thursday.

Explained how to deposit files in the WebCT dropbox

Each of the students shared their Personal Databases. They were quite innovative. We had a variety of topic including: Organizing libraries (personal and school) of books, Planning an upcoming wedding, Coordinating football or track teams, Discovering the family tree, and a couple of others that I don't recall here.

We spent some time reviewing Chapter 3 of the Bernhardt book. This involved reviewing how you will create a "school portfolio." The class broke into pairs and they discussed the various questions included on Page 30 of the book. They tried to answer the questions based upon their own school situations:

Who are we?
How do we do Business?
Where are we now?
Why do we exist? ( I would place this #2)
Where do we want to be?
What are the Gaps
How can we get to where we want to be?
How will we implement?
How will we evaluate our efforts?
We did not bring this to resolution because I wanted the students to think about it a little more. We will revisit this on Wednesday.

I presented a review of the terms and facets of database creation with Access. I will post the accompanying PowerPoint (PPT) on WebCT. I also used a PPT to introduce the students to the relational databases that will be included in Unit E of the Access Workbook.

Unfortunately, we had some more technical difficulties with the recording. The students and I worked very hard to use the microphone to record the whole class, but at the end I found that I hadn't turned on the On switch on the microphone.
Mea Culpa - Sorry.

Websites Mentioned in Class:

Zillow - a site that posts valuations of property around the US.

Day 1 of Using Databases in Education - Sum 06

The first day we:

Did introductory work,

Brainstormed the process we would use to create a huge database system that would support the distribution of goods and aid to Katrina Disaster victims.

Reviewed the Personal Database Assignment

Enjoyed Jesse White's preshttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifentation on the NCLB Brief about DDDM.

Reviewed Chapter 2 of the Bernhardt book.

Did an exercise concerning the 4 measurements in DDDM mentioned by Bernhardt.

Spent some time working on our Personal Databases.

Here is the podcast.

http://coe3.coe.uni.edu/~zeitz/podcasts/sum_db_day_1.mp3

Dr. Z's Using Databases in Education course

This blog is designed to provide a place where Dr. Z can provide additional resources for class.

The primary purpose is to create a place where podcasts can be easily syndicated. This means that Dr. Z is going to be uploading .mp3 files to a file server. He will then create a posting that has a quick overall synopsis of an evening's happenings. At the end of the posting, he will include a URL for the posting.

Dr. Z has listed this blog with Feedburner to provide the CSS subscription service. In real people talk, this means that Feedburner will provide the technical coding that will allow you to subscribe to the podcasts on this blog.

This way, you can use iTunes or some other similar program to bring it to your computer and ultimately to your mp3 player.

Here is the Feedburner address for the podcast subscription. http://feeds.feedburner.com/UsingDatabasesInEducation