iNACOL, LEC, and Me

I feel like writing a cartoon featuring an attack by frenzied acronyms.

Stay tuned for a table with a self-rating in iNACOL standards, personal growth reflection, and a learning plan.

Course Blue Print for Romeo and Juliet.  Organizer template info: This Course Blueprint is part of the Blended Learning Toolkit prepared by the University of Central Florida (UCF) and the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) with funding from the Next Generation Learning Challenges (NGLC). It is provided as an open educational resource under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.  Content inside the organizer is the original property of Daura Beard.  Educators are welcome to use it.

Course Syllabus (Assignment Links currently disabled)

English 9/10 CP Belnded Learning Course Syllabus

This is a comprehensive English Language Arts course designed to meet the California Content Standards and give you the skills you will need when you leave high school.  We will examine written conventions, use and improve your effective communication skills, tackle high school level fiction and informational texts, and use high level thinking skills.

Important Information

·         Schedule: Classes meet daily according to your class schedule.  We meet in the classroom Monday through Wednesday; Thursdays and Fridays we meet in the computer lab.  Assignments are listed below by grading period:

·         Quarter 1

·         Quarter2

·         Quarter 3

·         Quarter 4*(for the purposes of this assignment, only the Romeo and Juliet module is available)

·         Grading: will be determined based on rubrics, please consult the rubrics for each assignment.  The number of hours assigned to each project affects the percentage each one will have in your overall grade.  You’ll notice there are summative projects in lieu of tests: projects take several hours and count for greater percentages of your overall grade.  Incomplete work will receive no work hour credits, so please take each assignment seriously and do your best.

·         Policies:

·         All work must be done on time. If you miss a day, consult the class calendar to determine what work should be made up.  You will receive one day of extension for each day you are excused.  Projects, however, will have no extensions. Late work loses a letter grade, but will retain its worth of hours.  Because our web based discussions have a limited viability, missed discussions cannot be made up online; they will require an alternate assignment. There is a list of options available – it is your responsibility to ask.  Finally, being dismissed from class due to behavior or any non-emergency does not excuse you or grant you an extension.

·         Daily work hours will be graded no more than two days after the work is collected.  Late work is my last priority, and may take longer depending on my other responsibilities.  If you are close to finishing the course, turn work in on time!

·         Online assignments should be submitted in the online dropbox.  Directions will be given in class, and a tutorial is available under the Class Helpers section of the class webpage. 

·         Any questions that are not answered in class may be submitted through the school’s email system.  I will answer questions within 24 hours, excluding Sundays.  Depending on the nature and timing of the question, I will either answer in class the following day or respond with an email message.

·         Web based discussions are an important part of the class.  Each discussion question, with peer responses, is worth an hour of class time.  Any missing portions will result in “0 credit hours.”  Inadequate answers will affect your grade, and may be made up through additional work.  Responses that are inappropriate, inflammatory, off topic, or offensive will earn “0 credit.”  If I deem any comments as especially offensive or harassing, additional disciplinary action may be taken, including the loss of online privileges, or referrals to discipline.  The same respect and consideration that is required in the regular classroom is expected in the discussions.  Abuse will simply not be tolerated!

·         Academic Honesty: Academic honesty is expected at all times.  Plagiarism and cheating is not allowed, and may result in the loss of class credits.  You are responsible for doing your own work at all times.  Posting as someone else, working with another student during individual work, and using other peoples’ work as your own constitute dishonesty.  If you borrow information or ideas from another source, where appropriate, your must properly cite and give credit to those sources.  If you’re not sure, consult the Academic Honesty files under the Class Helpers section, or ask your teacher. 

Technical Requirements

While you should have sufficient time in class and in the lab to complete all work, students are able and welcome to complete regular assignments and homework assignments outside of the lab.  Simply log onto the school’s homepage and access your account.  Your account is accessible anywhere with your password. It’s up to you to remember your password or keep it in a safe place.  You are responsible for the integrity and courtesy of anything posted to your account.  If you suspect you have been hacked, or your online identity has been compromised in any way, contact me or the IT department right away to mitigate any issues that might arise.

The following are technical requirements for accessing the online course outside of the school’s computer lab.  Click on the name to download the free resources.

·         Mozilla Firefox is recommended as it works well with our system.

·         Adobe Reader is a program for reading PDF files. I recommend unchecking the McAfee security option if you already have virus protection

·         Microsoft Word Reader, a hotmail account for skydrive, and/or Google gmail account to for Google Drive docs and templates – you can use the school’s email-based accounts to communicate, but Google is often easier to access and navigate to create documents.

In addition to the programs provided by the school, the following are requirements and recommendations completing projects and organizing information. 

·         Informational organizers such as Evernote or Livebinders to store information

·         Email account such as Google gmail

·         Blog space is provided by the school, but you have the option of using outside providers; Blogger is a free option with a gmail account

·         Glogster is a free web-based program to make interactive posters. You will need an account for one of your projects

·         Voki is a free web-based program to create animated avatars. Someone in your group will need an account for one of your projects.

We will have lesson day in class for Glogster and Voki, but there are also tutorials available at the sites to help new users, and in the Class Helpers section of the class webpage.  Please consult the Helpers for instant information before waiting on a response from your teacher.  Also, I will be in the lab with you on Thursdays and Fridays to help with any questions.

This is a test of ClassMarker Quiz

Something still not quite right...At least I figured out how to make it fit in the bordewrs of the blog:)

6.3 Reflection: Technology and Assessment

This module has explored the use of technology tools for both formative and summative assessment. As you think about how you will implement formative and summative assessments in the online and blended environments, what are some of the factors you need to consider?

I know I would have to spend a great deal of time making sure my teaching covered both the content of the ELA course as well as the technology needed to complete those assignments. I resorted to using other people's (for the sake of this exercise, I'm going to call those youtube producers "experts") - so other expert's instruction for this project. I also only focused on one tiny aspect of what I normally do with characterization and the play Romeo and Juliet. I am proud of the fact that my assessment plan was formatted with section 508 in mind, but the text I put directly on the LMS pages, I'm less than proud to admit, were not all as carefully formatted - neither have they been recorded as I spent WAY too much time this week trying to figure out one very user-unfriendly tool: Hot Potato. I'm glad the discussion included ClassMarker. Too late for this project, but I'm planning on playing around with that on my next professional development day. To be honest, I hit several walls this week, and I was frustrated to the point of wondering if I had made a mistake in doing this class now, during the school year, instead of waiting until summertime when there would be fewer urgent demands on my time. Now that I'm done (I hope!) with this week, that feeling is passing, but it was intense!

 Besides the time factor and the technology parallel teaching, I find the actual LMS and the web tools students can actually access at my site are weighing heavily with me this week. For instance, I can access Google through my Teacher Accessibility permissions at my district; students cannot - they cannot connect to tools through their gmail accounts or facebook accounts, either. The district is afraid of what they might be able to access (I work in an extremely conservative area, so parents support this lock down even though most of the kids I ask can get around parts of the firewall by using smartphones, hacking, or using proxies or translation services). So I found myself getting pretty excited about things, going to school the next day, and discovering that it cannot happen at my school. Glogster, though, seems to be okay, so I'm hoping really hard that I can incorporate a glog project this year - maybe even for Romeo and Juliet as I've planned in this week's project. But then, there are no computers for student use in my class, so I have to weigh the number of hours I can access the lab with the logistics of getting students to the lab, signed in, registered, and finished. It's as discouraging as invigorating to contemplate using these nifty new tools.

 Specifially for assessment - assuming that I could access any of these tools without worrying about being randomly or summatively blocked - I need to consider building more self assessment into the plan as this is what will replace my keen ability to read student body language/behavior in the brick and mortar model. I call on students several times a day - and I have an intricate system for tracking and assigning credit for "participation points" in my efforts to assess - constantly - what kids know as we move through a unit. As for the Summative assessments, those seem to be mainly project based for me anyway - and now it's just a matter of including the technology or moving over to Web 2.0. I sound like I'm bragging, even to myself - so sorry! - but I do a lot of the feedback and the PBL discuss in the last two modules already. My challenge is to find Web 2.0 tools that can make it easier for me and students to produce and interact online as opposed to the usual face to face that I'm used to. All I can say for today, though, is it probably won't be "Hot Potato."

This is a Hot Potato Test

Romeo and Juliet
Characters Self-Assessment

click the above link to determine your knowledge of characters in the play.

testing if I can embed it here...

Characters in Shakespeare's _Romeo_&_Juliet_

Matching exercise

Match the items on the right to the items on the left.

Benvolio	??? Ruler of Verona Bethrothed to Juliet Juliet's family Fun-loving and hot tempered friend to Romeo. Cousin to Prince Escalus Romeo's family Hot tempered cousin to Juliet. Even his family sees him as too self-centered. He hates Romeo. Confidant to Romeo and Juliet. Has the best of intentions in all his actions. Good natured, even-tempered, cousin to Romeo. People see him as trustworthy and equitable. Flighty but loving confidant to Juliet
Tybalt	??? Ruler of Verona Bethrothed to Juliet Juliet's family Fun-loving and hot tempered friend to Romeo. Cousin to Prince Escalus Romeo's family Hot tempered cousin to Juliet. Even his family sees him as too self-centered. He hates Romeo. Confidant to Romeo and Juliet. Has the best of intentions in all his actions. Good natured, even-tempered, cousin to Romeo. People see him as trustworthy and equitable. Flighty but loving confidant to Juliet
Prince Escalus	??? Ruler of Verona Bethrothed to Juliet Juliet's family Fun-loving and hot tempered friend to Romeo. Cousin to Prince Escalus Romeo's family Hot tempered cousin to Juliet. Even his family sees him as too self-centered. He hates Romeo. Confidant to Romeo and Juliet. Has the best of intentions in all his actions. Good natured, even-tempered, cousin to Romeo. People see him as trustworthy and equitable. Flighty but loving confidant to Juliet
County Paris	??? Ruler of Verona Bethrothed to Juliet Juliet's family Fun-loving and hot tempered friend to Romeo. Cousin to Prince Escalus Romeo's family Hot tempered cousin to Juliet. Even his family sees him as too self-centered. He hates Romeo. Confidant to Romeo and Juliet. Has the best of intentions in all his actions. Good natured, even-tempered, cousin to Romeo. People see him as trustworthy and equitable. Flighty but loving confidant to Juliet
Mercutio	??? Ruler of Verona Bethrothed to Juliet Juliet's family Fun-loving and hot tempered friend to Romeo. Cousin to Prince Escalus Romeo's family Hot tempered cousin to Juliet. Even his family sees him as too self-centered. He hates Romeo. Confidant to Romeo and Juliet. Has the best of intentions in all his actions. Good natured, even-tempered, cousin to Romeo. People see him as trustworthy and equitable. Flighty but loving confidant to Juliet
The Montagues	??? Ruler of Verona Bethrothed to Juliet Juliet's family Fun-loving and hot tempered friend to Romeo. Cousin to Prince Escalus Romeo's family Hot tempered cousin to Juliet. Even his family sees him as too self-centered. He hates Romeo. Confidant to Romeo and Juliet. Has the best of intentions in all his actions. Good natured, even-tempered, cousin to Romeo. People see him as trustworthy and equitable. Flighty but loving confidant to Juliet
The Capulets	??? Ruler of Verona Bethrothed to Juliet Juliet's family Fun-loving and hot tempered friend to Romeo. Cousin to Prince Escalus Romeo's family Hot tempered cousin to Juliet. Even his family sees him as too self-centered. He hates Romeo. Confidant to Romeo and Juliet. Has the best of intentions in all his actions. Good natured, even-tempered, cousin to Romeo. People see him as trustworthy and equitable. Flighty but loving confidant to Juliet
Nurse	??? Ruler of Verona Bethrothed to Juliet Juliet's family Fun-loving and hot tempered friend to Romeo. Cousin to Prince Escalus Romeo's family Hot tempered cousin to Juliet. Even his family sees him as too self-centered. He hates Romeo. Confidant to Romeo and Juliet. Has the best of intentions in all his actions. Good natured, even-tempered, cousin to Romeo. People see him as trustworthy and equitable. Flighty but loving confidant to Juliet
Friar Lawrence	??? Ruler of Verona Bethrothed to Juliet Juliet's family Fun-loving and hot tempered friend to Romeo. Cousin to Prince Escalus Romeo's family Hot tempered cousin to Juliet. Even his family sees him as too self-centered. He hates Romeo. Confidant to Romeo and Juliet. Has the best of intentions in all his actions. Good natured, even-tempered, cousin to Romeo. People see him as trustworthy and equitable. Flighty but loving confidant to Juliet

Getting Your Paper MLA Ready

Lol - never thought I'd have a youtube account. Note to self - I need to do this for the Parents on the school website!!!

4.3 Reflection: Social and Professional Networks

Think about how the Internet has impacted your own personal learning, communication, and sense of community. Write a new post that includes a screenshot showing your participation in a social or professional network, and a summary of how you use that network for personal or professional connections or for new learning. In your post reflect on:

• When does the Internet help your learning? When does it distract from good learning for you?
• How might your answers to these questions be similar to or different from the answers your students might give?
• How might you support your students in using the Internet as their own personal learning space?

The Internet can be a huge help to my personal learning in a hundred ways.  I do online research, read about current events, get answers to quick questions (just last weekend, I used my phone to Google the scientific name for lapis-lazuli when my daughter asked if the gems we were looking at were also lapis).  I looked to youtube for information about using skitch and a couple of other apps while deciding which one to present in our group project.  Of course, I also watched a few other videos that were suggested in this ad-intensive business, including a REALLY funny analysis of the worst music of 2012 before I reminded myself that I was supposed to be doing something productive with my time.  There are so many different personal and professional possibilities: facebook and email/newletters to stay in touch with my friends and family.  I have porfessional resources on RSS feeds through my Google Reader account, and scoop.it and diigo for more related articles, and memberships for an ERWC group and haiku and CTAP and groupfusion etc for ways to incorporate more information into professional practice, and linkedin for professional networking and so many more that I don't even check into often enough because I still have to do the job - which is the reason I'm looking at all of these resources.  It can be overwhelming.

It seems like all knowledge is somewhere on the Internet.  And so much misinformation!  To use a personal example, a few years ago, someone made a wikipedia entry about my site along with blurbs about the teachers.  Then someone logged in and changed some of the blurbs and, as it turned out, I was actually not myself but Antonio Banderas in disguise.  Hey, at least the hacker made me sound awesome!  

But just last Friday, one of my colleagues read a report to her class about how Gerry Ford traveled through time to shoot Abe Lincoln in an effort to show students that not all info on the Internet is true or useful.  In an era when I have at least one student ask every year if The Odyssey was a true story, it's a little alarming that the Internet makes it even more difficult to tell fact from fiction at times.  Students are unwilling to distrust the main source of their entertainment - they insist constantly that their high-volume headphones don't distract anyone (even when I'm telling them that the irregular beat I hear from across the room is distracting to me).  They insist that Family Guy is the epitome of story-telling and that their time is better spent watching a cartoon in which a mentally deficient, overweight man-child fist fights a chicken-mutant-thing than doing any rational thinking of their own.  Refusing, even, to explain why that scene might be so appealing to an audience when it has nothing to do with the rest of the story in the episode.  Most of my students think that stopping every twelve seconds to check or respond to a text message is somehow helping them to concentrate on the task at hand until the next exchange.  Maybe it's a particularly long week talking here, but a lot of younger people today seem to see technology as a teat rather than a tool.  I sincerely hope that using more technology to drive education changes this; and it reinforces for me the need to make sure students who choose a fully online option have the conceptual view that technology is a tool and not an easy way to simply be somewhere else.

How to help students see that distinction?  I'm struggling with that even with my own kids.  At home and at school I find myself repeating things like, "We're doing work right now," or, "How is that ________ going to help you in real life?" It helps to keep students task oriented.  There is a specific job to do, with specific time frames.  We use the Internet to do things, not merely to be kept from being bored.  I'd hate to limit students to particular links because that negates the kind of authentic research that students should be able to do.  Maybe a personal dashboard or portfolio - like when we had to keep our personal dictionaries in 2nd grade, or show a collection of sites used for research like an annotated bibliography for a report.  Tools like diigo or scoop.it and evernote would come in handy for this.  And these are shareable, so students can access research sites from their peers and/or teachers on their quest to find more/more relevant information.  I think I convinced myself here: task orientation along with a way for students to keep track of info and share relevant (annotated) research places would help students see the Internet as a tool rather than a toy.  Maybe it's something that needs grow from the students - I have my personal self and my professional self, and the overlap is carefully controlled and has been since I was very young.  My students rarely have that - maybe they are more integrated, or maybe it's a lack of maturity, but most people need to delineate what is private and personal from their job.

scoop.it is an online curatorial tool that allows members to "scoop" info or articles into a sort of online magazine; it also trolls through other members' magazines to find other articles of possible interest.  I have a practice one with some resources to share with classes:

diigo is a bookmarking tool that allows members to tag and annotate links to websites and share lists with other people:

Google Reader is a tool that collects RSS feeds from bloggers and websites so that users are updated on changes and additions as they happen from the sites that are selected or "followed":

The Blame Game

Now that we have finished Romeo and Juliet, it’s time to decide who (or what) is the most responsible for their untimely deaths.  You will discuss the characters’ roles with your group, and each group will post a response assigning the various characters a percentage of blame with a detailed explanation of why your group blames him/her/it.  The percentages for all elements must add up to 100.  This is due Thursday, ##/## by 11:59pm.*

Characters (in order of appearance):

Benvolio

Tybalt

Prince Escalus

Lord and Lady Montague

Lord and Lady Capulet

Romeo

Mercutio

Nurse

Juliet

Friar Lawrence

County Paris

You may also include anyone or anything else that may have been to blame for the youths’ suicide, such as the various servants, the plague, fate, etc.

After all groups have posted, each individual must read all the groups’ responses and reasoning, then write a response to at least one group supporting (with evidence from the play) or challenging (with evidence from the play) their post.  Your thoughtful response is due no later than Monday, ##/## by 11:59 pm.*  Reminder: All posts must be polite, academic, and specific to the play.  You may use your list of sentence starters .  You will be graded according to the rubric below:

	A	C	F
Group Post	Assigns percentages to all characters with detailed reasons and evidence from the play and other resources.    All evidence is cited.	Assigns percentages to the culprits involved.    Some reasoning, or may overlook relevant details from the play.  May or may not use other resources.  All evidence is cited.	Blames only one or two sources.    Limited reasons.    Limited use of evidence.    Fails to cite the play.
Individual posts	Challenges or supports one or more groups’ posts using evidence from the play.   Uses polite and academic language in a thoughtful response about culpability.   Cites additional evidence to support the response.	Challenges or supports at least one other group’s post.   Uses polite and academic language.    May only repeat evidence used by the group, but cites any reference to the play.	Attacks the group.    Uses inappropriate or demeaning language.    Fails to offer a response.    Uses inaccurate evidence or fails to cite additional relevant data.

*Responses posted after the deadline will lose one letter grade.

You will receive a related prompt for your individual essays after the deadline to post responses.  This is a good opportunity to use your classmates' knowledge in order to make your essay the best it can be!