Ohio Resources

Other State of Ohio resources

Other has some great resources out there on the web.....

Grade 3 Diagnostics Tests (why not use these for early intervention, data building for future teachers?)
http://www.ode.state.oh.us/GD/Templates/Pages/ODE/ODEDetail.aspx?page=3&TopicRelationID=236&ContentID=19764&Content=31284

IMS: Instructional Management System (assessments, lesson plans, all aligned to standards)
http://ims.ode.state.oh.us/ode/ims/Default.asp?bhcp=1

Online administered practice tests (OAT)
http://ohio3-8.success-ode-state-oh-us.info/PracticeTest/

Build a Practice Assessment (OGT)
http://ogt.success-ode-state-oh-us.info/Profile/Login.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2fPracticeTest2%2fTeacher%2fDefault.aspx%3fnav%3dteacher&nav=teacher

Ohio Resource Center for Math, Science, Reading (ORC)…browse by standard or grade
http://www.ohiorc.org/

Ohio Social Studies Resource Center…support materials for Social Studies
http://www.ossrc.org/

Learning Express Library (includes secondary math, writing/grammar skills, tons of grade 4, AP practice, and more)
http://www.cincinnatilibrary.org/resources/research.asp?group=9 (

Sample/Released Test Items from Other Places

Ideas for Sample Test Items

Illinois Test Sample Booklets
http://www.isbe.net/assessment/htmls/sample_books.htm

Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) Released Tests
http://www.tea.state.tx.us/student.assessment/resources/release/

National Association of Educational Progress (NAEP) Released Test Items
http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/itmrls/

State of Ohio Released Tests
http://www.ode.state.oh.us/GD/Templates/Pages/ODE/ODEPrimary.aspx?page=2&TopicID=222&TopicRelationID=1070

State of Ohio Practice Tests
http://www.ode.state.oh.us/GD/Templates/Pages/ODE/ODEPrimary.aspx?page=2&TopicID=222&TopicRelationID=240

California Department of Education Released Test Items
http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/sr/css05rtq.asp

Indiana Statewide Testing for Educational Progress Practice Items
http://www.doe.state.in.us/istep/publications.html

Indian Core Assessments (High school)
http://www.doe.state.in.us/core40eca/welcome.html

Tennessee’s TCAT Released Items
http://www.state.tn.us/education/assessment/tsachsamp.shtml

Tennessee’s secondary schools practice test and sampler
http://www.state.tn.us/education/assessment/tssamplers.shtml

State of New York Practice Items
http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/osa/nyseslat/sampler07/home.htm
http://www.nysedregents.org/testing/mathei/07exams/home.htm (math)
http://www.nysedregents.org/testing/elaei/07exams/home.htm (lang arts)

Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System
http://www.doe.mass.edu/mcas/2006/release/ (2006 test and answers)
http://www.doe.mass.edu/mcas/2005/release/ (2005)
http://www.doe.mass.edu/mcas/2004/release/ (2004)

Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examinations
http://dpi.state.wi.us/oea/releaseitems.html

There are more state tests. This link to EDinformatics links to many more state test items that you could “adopt” for your own short term assessments.
http://www.edinformatics.com/testing/testing.htm

Social Bookmarking Homework

Social Bookmarking has some huge potential to establish shared online resources among staff. This could be a great help in terms of sharing valuable resources and instructional interventions that are working.

Please register for an account on Delicious. Add the toolbar to your browser and start booking. Start by bookmarking several of your favorite educational resources. Once you have done that look at your list of bookmarks and explore who else also bookmarked them….this exploration can lead to excellent discoveries of new sites.

For your assignment please post your delicious bookmark page. Here is how mine looks: http://del.icio.us/mlr2007

This link will help you install the IE extension...buttons to make delicious much more user friendly.
http://del.icio.us/help/ie/extension

Social Networking in Plain English

Social Bookmarking in Plain English

This one is brand new...they just published it...how it that for timing

Podcasting

Now that you have learned about Podcasting and podcasts, please use one or several of the podcast search engines to find a podcast that you might be interested in listening to. It can be professional or personal.

Download and listen to the podcast. (I have headphones) Listen to the podcast and post information about the podcast you listened to. What podcast was it? What was your impression of it?

Do you see podcasting as a tool for learning in your classroom with either teacher or student created podcasts?

http://www.podscope.com/
http://www.thepodcastnetwork.com/
http://www.podcast.net/
iTunes
http://www.podcastalley.com/

Educational podcasts or videocasts to consider:

Sir Kenneth Robinson: Do Schools Kill Creativity?
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/66

Dr. Scott McLeod's various podcasts
http://www.dangerouslyirrelevant.org/podcasting/index.html
http://scottmcleod.typepad.com/castleconversations/datadriven/index.html (specifics about data driven instruction)

What Educator's Need to Know about Web 2.0
http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2007/06/21/podcast163-what-educators-need-to-know-about-web-20/

Thomas Freidman presentation
http://www.podworkx.com/TheSydneyInstitute/2007/05/03/ThomasLFriedmanSydneyInstituteAnnualLectureTheWorldIsStillFlat.aspx

Apple Educational Conference Presentations
http://edcommunity.apple.com/ali/search.php?collectionID=1087

Tuesday: Tools Links

Tools to Share: New Ways to Create/Share Content

Atomic Learning
see handout for password

BrainPop
see handout for password

United Streaming see handout for password

Teacher Tube (teacher friendly YouTube like site)
http://www.teachertube.com/

400 Tools to Create online Content
http://mashable.com/2007/07/23/online-media/

Highlights from above post

http://www.eyespot.com/

http://voicethread.com/
show demo

http://www.slide.com/

http://www.slideshare.net/

http://www.scribd.com/

http://www.rockyou.com/

http://www.jumpcut.com/

http://www.bubbleshare.com/

Wikis

Now that you have seen wikis in action….how do you think you could use wikis in class. Obviously you could use other people’s wikis for information. How could you give make use of student created wikis in your classroom. Be specific with regards to courses, content, projects, etc. This link will give you some ideas.

Monday's Fun Tools

Fun tools for today include:

Comic Life

Flickr Tools

(De)Motivators
Not really a tool....but still fun.

Simpsonize Yourself

Looking for a way to spice up your staff profile on Blackboard. Try to Simpsonize yourself.
Here is our own Jeff W.

Bloglines: An RSS aggregator

RSS feeds are wonderful...some say it is the best professional tool a teacher or any professional could have access to. Remember....rather than going to websites, you subscribe to websites that have feeds (most active sites do) and then just go to your reader/aggregator to keep up to date.

Please go to Bloglines and create a new account. I would like you to also subscribe to at least 3 different blogs/sites that you would like to read. Once you have completed this please post in comments your account name as well as the names of the 3 sites/blogs you subscribed to.

Here are two tutorials to help you get started (Using Bloglines, Bloglines at Tech Help)
The RSS Guide for Educators handout will also help.

In order to tell me your account name your account needs to be public.
Here is a link on how to make your account public and how to get the web address.

A Day in the Life of Web 2.0

As we are learning more about Web 2.0 and its possible uses for education I think it would be a good idea to really push our imagination about what the future (not too distant?) might be like.

Read David Warlick's post on Web 2.0 and post a comment with regards to your impression of the article if you see anything like this ever happening. What about happening in your classroom?

Marzano and Web 2.0

If you aren’t sure what to focus on during your tech week I have a suggestion to help you get started.

Robert Marzano has written a valuable book (Classroom Instruction That Works) that is based on the meta analysis he did for McREL. In it he has written about what he thinks are the most “bang for your buck” instructional practices. In writing the book he read and studied hundreds of educational studies. He has classified them into what some people call the “Big 9” not to be confused with the “Big 6”.

A group of educators have created a wiki (shared web site) documenting how teachers can harness the power of technology and web 2.0 to teach with the big 9.

The Educational Technology That Works wiki might give you some improvement ideas.

Office 2007

Not sure if you noticed yet...but over the summer the district upgraded to Office 2007. I hope you will spend part of this week trying it out and see how the interface has changed. In your packet are some simple cheatsheets on the program. It has some new features and unfortunately a whole new user interface. Perhaps after using Office 2007 you will be able to relate to this video.

Top 100 Tools for eLearning

The list of online tools that creative educators can harness is impressive and growing. While all of the listed apps on this page aren't free (PowerPoint is on there) you can get a good idea of what types of tools are available for teachers to use.

Top 100 Tools for Learning

The producers of this page have also categorized the various types of tools into a toolbox that is separated in two types: personalized tools and production tools. The amount of quality tools out there is staggering. Part of the power of these tools is that it removes the school network from the process. No longer are files saved at school's network or on a child's home PC...rather the work is often saved online.

Learning Tools Toolbox

Blog: What is it all about?

So why all the talk about blogs? Is it really the most innovative publishing tool since the the printing press? Did you know that when it first started to take off in 2004 Webster’s dictionary made Blog the word of the year?

Read this post at Teacher’s First to start getting an idea about what a blog is and what it can allow you and your students to do.

Teacher's First

Digital Immigrants, Digital Natives

Marc Prensky is a game designer. He has written several books on gaming and today's learners. Several years ago, in an attempt to help teachers understand that today's students are quite different from when we were school aged children. Today's children are quite different than even those students we had 10 years ago. How can this be?

Prensky tries to explain it all in these thought provoking articles:

Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants (pt 1)

Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants: Do They Really Think Differently? (pt 2)

Please post your thoughts after reading these articles. Are today's kids really different?

RSS in Plain English

RSS or Real Simple Syndication is the technology that makes Web 2.0 go. Web 1.0 (we never really called it that) required anyone who published to have access to some type of web publishing software and access to a web server. Not everyone has the access or the know how to do that.

Web 1.0, and Email for that matter, are what is called PUSH technology. We publish or push the content out there and hope the right person sees it. There is are inherent flaws in the system! Either people don't know we updated our webpage (how would they) or people try to hard to get us email (ie spam).

RSS is a PULL technology...we subscribe to sources and only see what we've subscribed to. As the video says....yeah, big time saver.

Opening Session....

Welcome to TechTuneUp (version 2007).

As some of you know this is one of my favorite activities of the entire school year...I know the school year hasn't start yet...but I think of it as the school year.

During this week I have some new concepts and new tools to show you. There will also be some important new terminology for you to understand. Honest....it isn't mumbo jumbo...it is just new learning.

My goals for this week are:

- talk about today's learners (millenials) and their teachers (Digital Immigrants/Digital Natives)
- introduce you to Pinnacle Analytics
- introduce you to the concept of Web 2.0
- acquaint you to some of the main Web 2.0 tools
- among the tools to show/try are

• Blogs
• Wikis
• Social Networking
• Social Bookmarking
• Podcasting
• Screencasting
• RSS (pulls it all together)

- discuss 21st Century Skills and how the world is changing
- learn/play with new tools such as: Atomic Learning, BrainPop, Comic Life, and others

So what are you thinking about right now....what new learning are you thinking about? Please post in comments.

It is going to be a fun week!

Mark