My Final Blog

Farewell to all! :) I have learned so much in this course and I will go through some of my favorite and not so favorite tools...

For starters, I love everything that Google offers. I had no idea there were so many tools in the Google world. I have told so many other teacher friends about the cool applications Google has, and I am the biggest proponent for Google documents. I disliked doing group projects in school because no one ever took initiative to get the project going except me. Plus I or one other person would do most of the work while the other group members simply got credit. :) Now, with Google documents, it is a live document where students can see what other group members have done. Even cooler is that the teacher can go on the document and see how many times each student went on the site and do what amount of work. Now, not only can a student do their own work, they don't have to worry about doing someone elses portion of the work. Plus the teacher wont have to listen to students bicker about who did nothing and try and grade based on hearsay...they can simply view it!

Now, Blogger...I love the fact that you can make a blog for free, but I'm not sure about implementing this into my classroom. It is all outside classroom work, and it is hard to get students to do their homework already, so I'm not too sure about this. However, I would be open to doing it in my classes, because maybe I'll be surprised and see that the students would rather do a blog then regular paper and pencil homework.

Now, Jing...I love love love Jing!! It is so useful. I will definitely use this in the classroom. I will use as a tool for students who were absent and missed what the assignment was. My mom is a teacher and I showed her Jing, and she has already used it in her classroom!

Google voice...what an awesome concept! I would definitely implement this in the classroom because I want to be a hands-on teacher that is available to students and parents. With Google voice, I can be there and not use my everyday cell phone number... how great is that!

QR codes...I really liked these. I would love to use these in the classroom as bell work when the students first come into class.

YouTube...I would definitely have students use YouTube as a way of doing class presentations.

Google sites...I believe this site is a great project idea for students. However, due to the State Standards and pacing guide, I feel that it would be difficult to implement this into the classroom. This type of assignment would have to be an at home project, hoping that the students wil actually do it. But like I saud before, the students may rather do homework in this technology form rather than paper and pencil form.

Overall, I have learned so much from this course and will use many of this resources not only in the classroom, but for personal use as well.

Touring the Blogosphere

EduBlog Insights

Anne Davis is a blogger from Georgia State University and is an elementary educator. She is an advocate for blogging and pioneered the use of blogs with young writers. Her blog gave me more insight to what it means to blog and opened my eyes even more to it. Her blog, “Bypass Expensive Resources: Go Directly to Free” really stood out to me. It discusses how the landscape of online journals has changed. It talks about how everyone now can be a published writer. The term “published writer” really got my attention. Think about how difficult it is to be a published writer and to get your words out there? With blogging, everyone can have a voice and it’s free! She also talks about how blogging is a wonderful outlet for students. Many feel that they don’t have a voice or are afraid to use it. Blogging can serve as a haven to let them explore their feelings and ideas.

The article, “Am I Making Sense Here?” reveals that undergraduate students “can extend learning and facilitate transfer of learned concepts.” Student in a nutrition class used blogging for over seven weeks to make meaning of nutrition science concepts. Students were asked to post 21 times (3x per week) and comment on 35 posts by others (5x per week). Most posted and commented more often than requested. Reading that the students were engaged and did more than was expected shows that they did more that just an assignment, they became educators and advocates for themselves and each other.

The FordLog

Peter Ford is a teacher and educational consultant from the UK. He specializes in the use of Internet technologies to enhance teaching and learning. As I began to read his blog, I noticed that it began it in a slightly negative yet spunky demeanor with statements such as “…the mundane drudgery of spelling tests and multiplication tables or my uncreative SATs revision techniques” and “Parents were offered limited and occasional insight into the exciting and sometimes mundane world of Year Six through homework tasks and diaries”. Enthralled as to where this was going, I continued to read. Peter Ford decided to begin blogging. He realized that a blog could open the window into class life wider for parents and extend his class rules beyond the school day and beyond the classroom walls. He hoped it would be successful and knew the combination of class time and blog time would be good for learning. His first class blog aimed to be dynamic, collaborative, informative and two-way, and he hoped it wouldn’t be a short-lived endeavor. I liked that he wanted parents to be a key target audience for the class blog and I enjoyed reading the progress he made in enhancing his students virtual learning environment.

The Thinking Stick

Jeff Utecht is a technology specialist living and working at an international school in Shanghai, China. I searched through his blog posts, and the one that stood out to me was “Your schools profile: Are you keeping up?” As I read, I wasn’t sure what he was talking about. He stated, “In a socially connected world where communities trump content, schools need to continue to monitor and adjust where their community is moving to, what tools are they adopting, and what content they are creating, talking about, and using to connect to each other.” He then went on to say that one used to only have to worry about their school website. Then it was the wikipedia entry. Then came videos that kids were uploading to YouTube and Myspace. Next came Facebook. Shortly after that Twitter, and now location services (Foursquare, Facebook Places, Gowalla and Google Latitude ). Then he stated, “Your school does have a presence on all these sites right?” My mind said yes, but I have never heard of Foursquare and the other sites. He talked about being the mayor of his schools foursquare website and then battled it out for the mayorship for a few months with an 11th grader. Then he leaves for winter break to come back and find that Foursquare had taken off at his school. From there he decided to make his schools site official, since there were other venues about his school. He followed the steps on Foursquare to claim the venue, which he states, is a pretty easy process. From there he could add information such as the correct address, link to website, link to twitter account, and even offer specials to students.
He ran a special that if students checked in 5 days in a row he would buy their lunch. He gave away two lunches in January. From there he started thinking about other specials you could run for parents, students and the community. Such as check-ins during sporting event give-aways, attendance check-ins, daily give-aways etc. After reading this, I had no idea what he was referring to, so I decided to investigate. I went on the Foursquare website and signed up for an account. Instantly 3 of my friends popped up informing me of where they were and what they were doing. Crazy!! You can find your friends through facebook and other social networking sites to add to foursquare. There are links for history, badges, stats, friends and me. I still am not clear about the site, but his blog about it definitely sparked my interest!

How Social Media is Changing the Landscape...In General and In Education

Social media is changing everything and its crazy to fathom how far we have come. Prior to cell phones, we had to call people from home, leave voice mails and either wait for a returned call or check our answering machines when we got home. "Phone tag" was very prominent then. Now, with cell phones, not only can we call the person we need to reach from any location to any long distance destination, we can also facebook, email, tweet or blog them and choose to use our computer or cell phone. Wow!!

I was a little apprehensive about social media prior to this course. However, I am completely embracing it and really want to be an educator that plans lessons with what this generation of kids are doing. Incorporating facebook and other social networking sites, I believe, will make the students more reticent to engage and learn. Actually, last Friday I substitute taught a computer class and ended the period with the class doing a polleverywhere.com poll about how the spend their weekends. They absolutely loved it and many students said they wished they had this as a part of their lessons in the classroom and that they would pay attention more if they did. Note to personal self!!

Our landscape is constantly changing, as shown by Tim Burners-Lee's video about his constant vision for fresh ideas. Think about when the iphone first came out to where it is now. Apps have taken over! You can do everything from your phone having never to leave your home. Facebook began as a way for college students to connect and now connects people like those that grew up together and live on opposite ends of the country to keep in touch.

Lastly, I believe Social Media is also making us to be less patient. As I previously mentioned, waiting for a phone call and checking a voice mail were a normal occurrence. Now you can take your phone with you and have caller ID. Think about the times now when you keep calling someone and have missed calls. Doesn't that "phone tag" annoy you even a little? If you cant reach them do you choose to facebook them or text them, maybe right? Just something to think about.

YouTube

Watching a YouTube video and using a graphic organizer was an innovative and interesting way to take notes. As a student, I enjoyed this assignment. It was different and very organized. It was nice that the graphic organizer followed the chronological order of the video, keeping my attention and making it easy to fill in.
I would use this method in my own teaching because throughout my schooling I had a lot of classes that were mundane lectures that never had any other elements. I understand the importance of lecturing, but there are so many new strategies to use to make it more hands on, fun and memorable for the students. I would say that this assignment was all three of those elements. I enjoy watching YouTube videos like most students, and I saw this assignment as a more fun and memorable way for them to engage in the lesson as opposed to always listening to their teacher lecture.

The YouTube assignment is a great way to support what one teaches and learns. For example, I could do a lesson in class about the different types of earthquake plate boundaries: convergent, divergent and transform. We can takes notes about them in class and do a graphic organizer where they draw images of what each looks like. I believe this lesson is a great start, but not enough. Incorporating a YouTube assignment would make it more enriching for the students. I could assign a video for them to watch that shows what each type of earthquake actually looks like so they can see the images they drew in class come to life. Or I can begin the lesson with them watching the video and take notes on the graphic organizer and then come to class prepared to discuss each type as a class.

What would be most difficult from the instructors perspective is getting your students to actually log on and do the assignment at home (since you are not present). I can see why some teaches would be hesitant to do this. However, we ask students to go home each night and complete their homework worksheets, so how is it different? It’s a computer and that is scary for some teachers to think about incorporating. Some of the teachers I work with would never do an assignment like this because they did not grow up in the era of technology being used as homework. I did not grow up with YouTube as a source either, but I am open to it, especially since the kids grew up with it, and that’s the key!

Shift Happens Video

I watched Shift Happens 4.0 and the original version, both of which supplied me with information I never could have imagined. It was interesting to learn the years it took to reach a market audience of 50 million: radio-38 years, television- 13 years, internet- 4 years, ipod- 3 years, and facebook- 2 years. It just goes to show how amazingly far we've come. However, I did not know the extent we have reached with our technical capabilities.

For students starting a four year technical degree means that half of what they learn in their first year of study will be outdated by their third year of study. Wow! This means that the professors have to constantly be reading and researching the new innovations to come so they can educate their students. Honestly, prior to my first class last week, I thought this computer class was going to entail typing and learning about excel and powerpoint. Was I wrong! I am so excited to learn more about all the various technologies we have at our fingertips and develop ways to implement them in the classroom. If I was a middle schooler, I would love my teacher to use youtube, twitter, and facebook for assignments!

By 2013, a supercomputer will be built that will exceed the computational capabilities of the human brain. Hearing this makes me nervous. I guess I am still old school. I prefer holding a book in my hands as opposed to an ipad or kindle.  This is most likely due to my lack of knowledge and experience with these devices. However, learning I can have an ipad that cancels out carrying my textbooks and laptop in my backpack sounds great.  It is strange to conceptualize that I can purchase e-books and take notes in the margins with a stylus.  I am grateful to this course and the information from Shift Happens to open my eyes to all the technologies out there. It’s about time I realize that “shift happens “ and that I should just jump on board! Lastly, I kind of liked the music from the original video. :)