Jose Lucero

• #2:  Local Community Service Website

Analysis:  (users): The audience for this project will be 10th grade AVID students at El Cajon Valley High School.  They will range from ELD sheltered, college prep. to Honors students.  They all have a vested interest in community service since it is a part of their academic grade in AVID and will be a part of their college application requirements.  AVID is a college prep. program whose goal to ensure students are both college ready and prepared prior to leaving high school.  As members of the program, they are required to complete a minimum of 50 hours of community service.  They are all very motivated to earn acceptance into a four year university and are willing to take on the extra responsibilities of being an AVID student.

(goal): The problem this site will address is student’s inability to find a community service organization they can participate with.  Many times students simply do not have any idea where to start.  This site will eventually serve as a resource for students to a wide variety of community service opportunities in their community.  The goal is to find one either on the site, or during the research process and commit their time to it in order to make themselves more competitive during the college application process while helping their community.  Prior to completing this project, student will have a good understanding of the importance of community service and its role in the college application process.

(other sites):  Currently we have not found another community service resource site that focuses strictly on El Cajon.  There are a few that focus on San Diego community service opportunities, but we have yet to find a resource that meets their  specific need of El Cajon.  This site will meet that purpose.

(performance drivers):   Skills/Knowledge:

1. Research: Many of my students lack the research skills to locate local community service opportunities.  I will have to provide training or a “google advanced search” job aid to help them in this process.

2. Technology Use:  Many of my students have not manipulated the various functions (post, edit, link, comment) in edublogs.  I will have to provide training with the help of the edublog “help and support” functions.

Design:  (what will users do?) One of the biggest challenges we face as AVID teachers is that students do not know where to turn to for community service opportunities and they do not fully understand the importance of community service and its role in the college application process.  These problems lead us to our two major goals.  The first goal of this project is for students to collaborate to develop a website that serves as a reference to students for all of the community service opportunities in their local community.  Each student will be responsible for locating and posting a group or organization that offers community service opportunities and sharing it through the site to other students.  The second goal is to comment on 5 organizations that you might volunteer with and explain why?.  The instruction will be organized as follows:

Objectives: (Locating and Reporting):

• Each student will be able to  locate, post/link and report on a community service opportunity available to students in their community.
• Each student will be able to report on the following questions:

- Provide a link to the organization.

- What is the name of the organization?

- Where are they located?

- What is their overall mission statement or objective?

- What are the specific duties they will expect me to perform?

- What skills do I need in order to perform each duty?

- How many hours a week would they like me to commit to volunteering?

- How long would they like me to volunteer? (ex. days, weeks, months, etc.)

- Where will the majority of the community service occur?

- What additional resources do they provide for aspiring volunteers?

(Community Service Analysis):

• Each student will be able to analyze 5 of the resources provided by other students by answering the following questions for each organization:

- What is the name of the organization?

- What is their link?

- What do you like about them?

- What skills do you have that they desire?

Development (Part 1): 

- (tools): A blogging and comment tool (edublog), google advanced search tutorial.

- (customization): Two very directive blogs providing direction for research and analysis, links to local popular community service sites, links to articles discussing the importance of community service and its relationship to the college application process.

(Part 2):

- I like the way my site turned out.  I like the look of the site, and I think breaking down step by step for my students is the way to go.  Its strength is its organization while its weakness may be how students respond to on another.

- One thing I learned about setting up the site that in Weebly, blogs are divided up into different pages.  So unlike edublogs were you can have multiple posts on one page, in Weebly you must create separate pages.  This worked out perfect for me for this project since I wanted my students to visit different pages for different purposes.  Depending on the project, I may have to use edublogs or a different tool next time.

Implementation:  I will introduce this in the first two weeks of school.  We will start by looking at the various college admission requirements and when we eventually run into community service, I will introduce our site.  Luckily for me, weebly does not require log ins or passwords.  The one thing I will have to monitor is when students add to our Etherpad page.  I will tell my kids that if they alter another post, it is an automatic zero for that portion of the assignment.  The rest of the posts they are simply using the comment function.    As far as privacy goes, I think I need to develop a privacy and posting policy and list what and what is not allowed.  I will have an administrator proof it before I send it introduce it to my students.   After it is created, I will have parents read it and sign it before they can participate in any of the assignments.   I think being open with my students, administrators,  and parents is the best way to ensure safety for everyone involved.

Evaluation:  Definitions for each level are in development.

Objective	Foundational	Developmental	Proficient	Score
Locating a Resource	10 - Completed 79 – 70% of the steps.	20 - Completed 99 -80% of the steps.	30 - Completed 100 %of the steps.	/30
Reporting on a Resource	10 - Completed 79 – 70% of the steps.	20 - Completed 99 -80% of the steps.	30 - Completed 100 %of the steps.	/30
Analyzing a Resource	10 - Completed 79 – 70% of the steps.	20 - Completed 99 -80% of the steps.	30 - Completed 100 %of the steps.	/30
Total				/90

 

(In no particular order)

• #1: “Lord of the Flies” Pre-Reading Project

Audience:  The audience for this project will be 10th graders from El Cajon Valley High School.  The general population comes from a lower socioeconomic background, and many times lacks academic support at home.  They vary in levels from ELD sheltered, general ed., to honors.  Although they all come from various academic levels, they are all held to the same academic standards.  They will know very little if nothing about this text, therefore our main goal is to build curiosity into its content and themes.  In general, they all have a great interest in texts with conflict and typically enjoy texts that have a clear resolution.  There are roughly 35 students in each class, with each room housing approximately 12 computers with internet access.

Message:  The instructional gap I am trying to fill is our students need for interactive pre-reading.  One of our biggest challenges is simply getting students interested and engaged in reading.  The major goal of this instruction is to have our students make personal connections, predictions, and inferences about the text prior to actually reading it.  I feel that building student interest is essential in order for students to have success with a text of the length and complexity of “The Lord of the Flies”.  All of this pre-reading content will be introduced and discussed in the classroom, but application will be done as homework.  The instruction will be organized as follows:

1. Image Analysis:  Each member of the class will post an image related to “The Lord of the Flies”.  After the image is posted the student will…

- Make a prediction on what they feel the text is about based off the picture.  ex.  “This text is about _____ due to the fact that _____”.

- Each student in the class will then either agree or disagree with 5 other predictions posted in the blog.

2. Video Analysis:  Each member of the class will post a video clip related to “The Lord of the Flies”.  After the image is posted each student will…

- Comment on what they found interesting about the video clip. ex.  “One thing I found very interesting about video clip was _____ because _____”.

3. John Locke Analysis:  Each member will locate and link one of Locke’s views on human nature.  After the view is linked each student will…

- Briefly summarize his view on human nature.  ex.  “John Locke believes humans are _____ because _____.”

4. Thomas Hobbes Analysis:  Each member will locate and link one of Thomas’s views on human nature.  After the view is linked each student will…

- Briefly summarize his view on human nature.  ex.  “Thomas Hobbes believes humans are _____ because _____.”

5. Locke and Hobbes Synthesis:  In groups of four students will collaborate on a Prezi Presentation in order to develop a summary of both philosophers beliefs.  They can refer to the links and summaries their classmates have created in order to develop a strong understanding their viewpoints.  This is essential in order fully grasps the themes in our text.

Tools:  Students will need access to…

- Working Computer

- The internet

- www.edublogs account

- Prezi Presentation

• #2:  Local Community Service Website

Audience:  The audience for this project will be 10th grade AVID students at El Cajon Valley High School.  They will range from ELD sheltered, college prep. to Honors students.  They all have a vested interest in community service since it is a part of their academic grade in AVID and will be a part of their college application requirements.  AVID is a college prep. program whose goal to ensure students are both college ready and prepared prior to leaving high school.  They are required to complete a minimum 50 hours of community service every year as members of the program.  They are all very motivated to earn acceptance into a four year university and are willing to take on the extra responsibilities of being an AVID student.  Prior to completing this project, student will have a good understanding of the importance of community service and its role in the college application process.

Message:  One of the biggest challenges we face as AVID teachers is that students do not know where to turn to for community service opportunities and they do not fully understand the importance of community service and its role in the college application process.  These problems lead us to our two major goals.  The first goal of this project is for students to collaborate to develop a website that serves as a reference to students for all of the community service opportunities in their local community.  Each student will be responsible for locating and posting a group or organization that offers community service opportunities and sharing it through the site to other students.  The second goal is to research and report on the importance of community service in regards to its role in the college application process.  The instruction will be organized as follows:

1.  Locating and Reporting:  Each member of the class will locate, post and report on a community service opportunity available to students in their community.  Each student will report on the following questions:

- What is the name of the organization?

- Where are they located?

- What is their overall mission statement or objective?

- What are the specific duties they will expect me to perform?

- What skills do I need in order to perform each duty?

- How many hours a week would they like me to commit to volunteering?

- How long would they like me to volunteer? (ex. days, weeks, months, etc.)

- Where will the majority of the community service occur?

- What additional resources do they provide for aspiring volunteers?

2.  Community Service Research:  Each student will locate and post an online article discussing the importance of of community service and its role in the college application process.   After the link is posted the student will…

- Summarize the key points made in the article.

- Discuss what they learned about the importance of community service as it relates to the college application process.

Tools:

- Working Computer

- The internet

- www.edublogs account

• #3:  Local College Scholarship Website

Audience: The audience for this project will be 10th, 11th and 12th grade AVID students at El Cajon Valley High School.  All of these students have committed themselves to earning their way into a four year university.  The level of understanding of the costs and financing involved in the college experience varies from the 10th to 12th grade.  I would characterize each groups knowledge level as the following.  10th graders (foundational),  11th graders (developing), 12th graders (proficient).  Many of our students come from lower socioeconomic back grounds and are very interested in finding ways to pay for their college aspirations.  They are highly motivated to succeed in the classroom and earn a spot in college.

Message:  Many of our students have struggled to earn scholarship money due to the fact that they typically apply to nation and state wide scholarships.  The competition for these dollars is fierce with a high number of highly qualified and needy applications all fighting for the same scholarship.  Many of our students lack a resource that provides them with a listing of a local scholarship they can apply for.  The goal of this collaborative website is to provide students with a centralized resource of all of the local scholarships available in their community.  According to Deborah Fox from Fox College Funding, students can increase their chances of winning if they focus on applying to local and regional scholarships.  The problem is that many students do not know where to turn in order to find them.  This site will fill that need.  The instruction will be organized as follows:

1.  Locating and Reporting:  Each member of the class will locate, post and report on local scholarship available to students in their community.  Each student will report on the following questions:

- Who is awarding the scholarship? (name of group or organization)

- What are the organizations goals and interest?

- Where are they located?

- How much are they awarding?

- What are the eligibility requirements?

- When are the application deadlines?

- What information do they require in the application?

2.  Scholarship Research:  Each student will locate and post an online article discussing the importance and role scholarships play in supplementing the costs of college.   After the link is posted the student will…

- Summarize the key points made in the article.

- Discuss what they learned about the importance of scholarships and their role in supplementing the costs of college.

Tools:

- Working Computer

- The internet

- www.edublogs account.

My name is Jose Lucero.  I am an 10th grade English teacher at El Cajon Valley High School.  I have limited experience using and setting up blogs.

Which of the following is the truth?

1. In once spared with Oscar De La Hoya.

2. If needed, I could call NBA legend Larry Bird.

3. In 2002 I fell 1/4 down the side of the ancient pyramid Chicen Itza in Cancun Mexico.