My experience on Google Sites

https://sites.google.com/site/introductiontoeducationalmedia/

I can’t believe I have created a Website for my first time! It was definitely a fun experience.I’d like to share about how I made it as follows.

To get started, go to sites.google.com and click on the Create button to create my first website. Give my site a name and then customize the end of the URL if I like. By default, it’ll just be sites/google.com/site/sitename. If I chose a blank template, I can select a theme also. Click the “I’m not a robot” button and then click Create at the top.I’ll now be brought to the homepage for my new site.

The important section is at the top where I can edit the current page. To adjust the settings for the page and the site, click on the gear icon and then click on the Manage site. Then I can configure a bunch of options like the site name, site description, the landing page, etc.The last section of sidebar in Manage site let me add a header image and change the font, color and size for the text in various sections of the site like content area, sidebar, navigation, etc.

When I start editing and creating new pages, I can choose to create four types of pages: Web Page, Announcements, File Cabinet and List. Then choose the location of my page. I can create a top level page or put it under a different page. An Announcements page is a blog page with posts listed in chronological order. A File Cabinet page lets me upload files and will list them on the page. A List page allows me to create a list of items and displays them in table format. I can change the template for a page anytime by clicking on the gear icon while on the page and choose Change page template.

If I want to add something on the page, for example, to add a table, click on the Table menu item and choose the size of my table in terms of rows and columns. To insert anything else, click on the Insert menu option.I can insert all kinds of items like images links, text boxes, HTML boxes, calendars, charts, maps, YouTube videos, etc. When working with text, I can click on the Format tab to pick different heading styles, etc.

I can see recent site activity, all my pages, attachments that I upload, page templates I can use, apps scripts, sharing and permissions and themes/colors/fonts. I can also choose to insert recent site activity on the sidebar so that I can keep track of changes. I can even revert to an older version by using 'Revision history.' From my site, click More actions in the top right of any page and select Revision history.If I change my mind about the most recent edits I or my collaborators made to the site, simply revert to an older version by clicking any version from the list. After returning to the 'Version history' view, click the Revert to this version link next to the version I'd like to revert to. Then my document will be reset to the version I selected.

AR Apps with and without targets

I never imagine I can see dinosaurs in the real world! But it happened when I just simply clicked on the Dinosaurs app on ipad. All kinds of dinosaurs are just walking and roaming around everywhere in my surroundings. When we touch each single of them on the screen, the detail information will pop up, such as species, diet, sizes, the period they live and so on. We can experience them both in my real world and their virtual world by switching scenes.  In my language classroom, after I introduce the topic and read dinosaur stories to my students, I can ask them to create their own dinosaur research report. They can read more dinosaurs reading books, playing with Lego, playing with the toy dinosaurs and put a 3D image of a dinosaur in a photo. They are going to present along with their posters about their knowledge on dinosaurs and sort the dinosaurs into categories. I will apply this app to students fourth grade and above.

As a language teacher, I always expect my students to explore the details of an object and describe it in an expository writing. AR House will provide students a real virtual experience. They are able to take a tour of a construction site on this app instead of going to a field trip. They have the opportunity to exam every floor from every angle in the building for details, they can observe the building’s  outdoor view and every perspective from the roof. Students can work in peers and talk with each other about what they observed and how they felt. They can come up with the discussion of the structure of the building and outline the structure of their writing before they start the written work. I will use this app for the written task for middle and high school students.

If I want to talk about the body part or the physical structure of humankind, Anatomy 4D will be a good app for that. Just through this app and a simple printed image, Anatomy 4D transports students, teachers, and anyone who wants to learn about the body into an interactive 4D experience of human anatomy. Students will be able to learn about and explore the human body and heart in intricate detail. They can choose to change the view back and forth between a male and female body. They have the opportunity to highlight various organ systems individually, for example, they can focus on just the skeletal, muscular, or respiratory system. They can zoom in to experience each organ or body part in-depth. This app will be used for me to teach high school students.

Quiver could be perfect for me to use as a storytelling prompt. It comes in different languages including English, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish and instructions on how to use the app. Students will have fun to color and create their main story characters and settings. The feature of the app seems attractive to students that it gives students the opportunity to customize their own figures and watch each one jump off the page! Students will love this magical experience. By moving the device that hosts the app around, students can view the animation from different angles.When viewing any given animation students can zoom it in and out, capture a photo or video record it, pause and resume it. This app helps students to develop their imagination and creativity in a storytelling activity. I will choose to use it to children 6 years and above.

Comment on Google Forms and CCSS

Google Forms is a tool that can be used for teachers gathering data from students and the community as well as delivering online assessments to students. The data collected from Google Forms can directly go into a Google Spreadsheet, where it can be analyzed, organized, and displayed in Gadgets and charts.

There are many ways for teachers to use it in the classroom, the following are some examples:

1. Teachers can create questionnaires and surveys to obtain information about students.
2. Teachers can manage parent contact logs out of it
3. Teachers can design self-grading student quiz with it
4. Teachers can create discipline forms to track students’ attendance or behavior.

All data and information can be e-mailed directly to the parents and shared with other school faculties.

For a math teacher, he/she can ask students to create questions for other classes to answer - they collaborated on the same Google Form. After the other classes took the survey, they graphed the results as part of their math unit on graphing. As what is required in Common Core State Standard, students make “strategic use of digital media and visual displays of data.”

For a language teacher, he/she can ask students to use Google Forms to create their own questionnaires about a unit of work. Students will have the opportunities to extend and/or strengthen their understanding in creating effective questions. Students can then complete other students' quizzes to boost their understanding again. It could be created and/or completed during lesson time or as a homework activity. According to Common Core State Standard, students will be able to “conduct short as well as more sustained research projects to answer a question or solve a problem; narrow or broaden the inquiry when appropriate; synthesize multiple sources on the subject, demonstrating understanding of the subject under investigation.”

Comment on Spreadsheets and CCSS

The Common Core State Standard requires students to use appropriate tools when thinking mathematically. Google Spreadsheets can meet this requirement by allowing students to collect, analyze, and report findings with data, which enables students to become better decision makers and problem solvers.

For example, the teacher can ask students to collect data of how many hours they spend on doing homework everyday and find out the average study hours per week or month for the class. The teacher just needs to create a Google Spreads and share it with the class; then assign the students a cell number to enter their data. For elementary level, students can experience elementary algebra in action as they create and use formulas and function tables. For secondary level, patterns, probability experiments and other data can be instantly analyzed with dynamic graphs that adjust automatically as new data is entered. Then students can make predictions and formulate conjectures as they compare theoretical data with real-life data. According to the Common Core State Standards,”Technology plays an important role in statistics and probability by making it possible to generate plots, regression functions, and correlation coefficient, and to simulate many possible outcomes in a short amount of time”. Google Spreadsheets allow students to analyze, predict, and share data that can help mold the understanding of the subject.

When language teachers teach reading scientific and technical texts, they can encourage students to draw or create graphical representations of the data that help students to understand the concepts and context. Students can benefit from expressing the data in their own creative ways. According to the CCSS, “When reading scientific and technical texts, students need to be able to gain knowledge from challenging texts that often make extensive use of elaborate diagrams and data to convey information and illustrate concepts.”

Comment on 5 Chinese Apps

Essential Chinese is an app for the introduction to vocabulary, phrases, and grammar of the Chinese language. It covers most basic conversational topics in daily life. Each lesson focuses on one topic. However, free lessons are limited, the user needs to pay for more lessons. It has 3 sections in each lesson: vocabulary, grammar and conversation, which allow the user to practice listening, speaking and recognizing Chinese words and phrases. Games are designed at the end of each section. This app is good for beginners to start learning Chinese from the beginning.

Chinese Pad provides interactive Chinese books and articles on the app. It includes a built-in Chinese-English dictionary, an open content platform and a set of tools to drill users in the basic language skills. With this app, the users can practice their handwriting; record their voices and test their knowledge on a certain topic. This app is good for learners of intermediate level or above. Because the content is more focus on Chinese culture, custom, folk stories and idioms.

Learn Chinese provides a couple of free lessons with various topics. In each lesson, selected vocabularies on a particular topic are displayed with pinyin, characters, sound and pictures. The user can listen to the sound of the word repeatedly. After each vocabulary is introduced, a test follows up asking the user to match the sound of a word with its picture. On this app, the user can create a profile and keep their learning history and results recorded. It is an app designed for a more audio-visual style learner. It meets the needs for those who just simply wants to name things in Chinese since it doesn’t cover phrases, sentences on a conversational level.

Chinese Skill is an app designed for testing. When the user starts a lesson, he enters in a quiz window right away. However, the quiz seems to breeze past many aspects of language without any specific focus on any of them. For example, in a quiz, the user will be asked to match a sound with a Chinese character; trace writing a character; fill in blanks for a missing word in a sentence; then translate a sentence into English. The user can review all the contents by taking formal tests that come with four categories: flash card, character, word and sentence. This app is a tool for testing learners’ knowledge so the user is supposed to have some background knowledge.

iLearn Chinese focuses on teaching learners Chinese characters. It believes that a large number of characters are required for effective communication. It emphasizes the historical information of each character and demonstrates the writing of characters stroke by stroke. The users are able to practice the writing on the touch screen as many times as they like to “feel” and “program” the stroke orders into their memory. The app has image icons for characters of both concrete and abstract meanings. That means it provides pictures for not only real objects like “desk”, “cup”, but also abstract concepts such as “love” and “year”. This app is good for those who love to research about the history of Chinese words and learn Chinese from writing and accumulating words.

My experience on Spreadsheet

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1AnUynI1n4JlK8E10Myp7DjvFXLUY49dnfVQoHDFNgpg/edit 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1szuIMSxwPIdzOcSRyN8exx6HQSY6Ifez7ZkHHMEwN_4/edit?usp=sharing

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10budeyNtsNJZisKxS-C8US6t22Q1ynV7TQvhdbKzqjU/edit?usp=sharing

It is my first time to experience working on a spreadsheet. I was very excited when my grade sheet was created. It seemed easy to create a new sheet and put data in each cell. Formatting text in the cell is similar to it on Google Doc and slides. We can choose to change font size, make words or data bold, italic, or underlined. We can change the text color and fill the cell with colors. There are some more similarities like inserting chart, images or links on it… However, Google Sheets has its own features since people use it mostly to deal with data. For example, when copy and paste, we have options to choose from paste values, format or formula, each leads to paste only a particular attribute of cells. When we delete, we can choose either to delete a data in the cell or a whole row or column. We can also choose to freeze rows and columns to protect ranges. Functions allow us to perform specific calculations of the data in a selected block of cells, such as sum, average and maximum etc. It is also a challenging part for me to be careful with putting in a particular formula for each calculation.

Since I had only experienced it by creating a self-grading quiz and a grade sheet in this couple of days. I believe there are many functions on it waiting for me to explore further. For example, what I can do with filter view, what changes on borders will happen… But I know I can learn more from Google Docs Editors Help.

Comment on the Lesson plan

It is a good idea to ask students to explore and design Tangram Square with Google Drawing. The lesson plan just showed us how the lesson with Google app meets the Common Core State Standards. As a language teacher I will have the CCSS on all listening, speaking, reading and writing aspects. I can definitely come up with lessons with Google Drawing to ask student to sort out their ideas by creating collaborative drawings and have my class free of paper.