As far as micro-blogging, I was scared that there would be a lot of spam and a lot of non-sense that the students wouldn't use. As I read the two articles "7 Things You Should Know About Mirco-Blogging" and the article about "Edmodo". The first article, "7 things" made me think that it could be good in the class. It would be for the students who are scared to speak in class, instead they would want to "tweet" rather than actaully speak up. But again, I ran into conflicts within myself about spam and them actually not using it for educational resources. "Edmodo" solved the problems that I was having. Edmodo is a closed group collaboration. With this closed group collaboration, there is a secret password for the students to use in order to get into that group. Things that the teacher and the students can use the mircoblogging for would be asking questions, making points, and also such things as polls and reminders about upcoming events such as tests and projects.
Overall, I was impressed with information from those two articles. Before reading them I would never want to use the mircoblogging within the classroom. It always seemed a little over the edge for me, especially with the idea that they will have access to every twitter account. But the idea of "Edmodo" made it a little better!
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Friday, February 19, 2010
Teacher Voices
Teacher Voices is just one of the blogs that I found to be interesting. The first time I clicked on this blog, the first post caught my attention. It was a review of a book regarding metaphors and analogies. I believe that both metaphors and analogies are important to teaching, especially if a student has a hard time understanding what you are trying to teach.
Within the review, it is mentioned that the the person reviewing the book has never thought of so many metaphors and analogies for students. Things such as dancing, songs, art, and visuals to help students have that "aha" moment.
"Finally, in understanding all this, students and teachers sharpen their analytical skills. They embrace abstract kinds of thinking and students are able to take their concrete knowledge to the next level –which is where every teacher wants to journey with our kids."
It is this sentence that pretty much summed up the whole article for me. I could not of said it better myself, which is why I posted it in my blog. I am interested to read this book myself, mainly because it is something that I am interested in. I also enjoy how it says students and teachers. It just isn't the students that are learning, it is also the teachers.
"Finally, in understanding all this, students and teachers sharpen their analytical skills. They embrace abstract kinds of thinking and students are able to take their concrete knowledge to the next level –which is where every teacher wants to journey with our kids."
It is this sentence that pretty much summed up the whole article for me. I could not of said it better myself, which is why I posted it in my blog. I am interested to read this book myself, mainly because it is something that I am interested in. I also enjoy how it says students and teachers. It just isn't the students that are learning, it is also the teachers.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Classroom 2.0
I visited the Classroom 2.0 Ning. There I found A LOT of useful information even without exploring that much, which I plan on doing.
The first thing that caught my eye was in the introduction or the "welcome" that was published. It was very encouraging to read that for many reasons. The reason that really caught my attention and made me stay to check it out a little more was the following quote:
"We especially hope that those who are "beginners" will find this a supportive community and a comfortable place to start being part of the digital dialog."
I feel like this is not only geared towards the teachers who are starting out on this Ning and technology in general but also teachers who are within their first few years of teaching. The beginners also have their own group within the Classroom 2.0 Ning.
Another thing that made me look around a little bit more would be the fact that it was very well organized. I am not sure if I am OCD or it just comes with being a teacher but I like everything to be fairly organized. There were a few of the Nings that I looked at that were not very organized at all. Also there was a lof of spam on the other Nings that I also looked at. Classroom 2.0 seems to have this under control with them having to accept people into the Ning. This must be a setting that they have to enforce and does not seem like common practice since I saw so much spam on other pages.
Classroom 2.0 will be helpful to my teaching because there always seems to be people posting something. It can be anything! Questions, comments, articles, ideas. I feel that this is very helpful because for the most part, it seems that the questions do get answered, especially in the beginner section. I am someone hwo likes to learn new things and I feel that I can learn many new things within this Ning, especially in terms of technology, which I plan on always having in my classroom.
The first thing that caught my eye was in the introduction or the "welcome" that was published. It was very encouraging to read that for many reasons. The reason that really caught my attention and made me stay to check it out a little more was the following quote:
"We especially hope that those who are "beginners" will find this a supportive community and a comfortable place to start being part of the digital dialog."
I feel like this is not only geared towards the teachers who are starting out on this Ning and technology in general but also teachers who are within their first few years of teaching. The beginners also have their own group within the Classroom 2.0 Ning.
Another thing that made me look around a little bit more would be the fact that it was very well organized. I am not sure if I am OCD or it just comes with being a teacher but I like everything to be fairly organized. There were a few of the Nings that I looked at that were not very organized at all. Also there was a lof of spam on the other Nings that I also looked at. Classroom 2.0 seems to have this under control with them having to accept people into the Ning. This must be a setting that they have to enforce and does not seem like common practice since I saw so much spam on other pages.
Classroom 2.0 will be helpful to my teaching because there always seems to be people posting something. It can be anything! Questions, comments, articles, ideas. I feel that this is very helpful because for the most part, it seems that the questions do get answered, especially in the beginner section. I am someone hwo likes to learn new things and I feel that I can learn many new things within this Ning, especially in terms of technology, which I plan on always having in my classroom.
A learner is like...
After reading the article and watching the video "The Network is the Learning" I have decided that A learner (especially in today's society) is like a spider.
I say that a learner is like a spider because all learners are constantly spinning a new 'web' of information. Basically we are always learning. The bugs that would be getting stuck in the web is all of the new information that we are 'eating up'. The one line in the article by George Siemens that really made me come to the conclusion that learners are like spiders would be: "Within social networks, hubs are well-connected people who are able to foster and maintain knowledge flow". Today, we think of social networks like Facebook and Myspace. Social networks can also consist of such things as our virtual connections that we have from the class. We are always learning new things, not only from the content but from each other. That is just one aspect of the 'big web' that a spide can weave.
Before I knew the title of the video that I watched, which was "The Network is the Learning", I wrote down that as the quote to use within my blog here. The network is the learning! The network is the spideweb that we get the information from. We receive this information for many sources, such as 'other spider webs'. There are many good points that is made within this video. The one that stuck out to me the most was the one that we can stay connected to people around the world. This is completely true, especially since my best friend just recently moved to Germany. I talk to her every day like she is not only still in the states but right down the road.
Before I knew the title of the video that I watched, which was "The Network is the Learning", I wrote down that as the quote to use within my blog here. The network is the learning! The network is the spideweb that we get the information from. We receive this information for many sources, such as 'other spider webs'. There are many good points that is made within this video. The one that stuck out to me the most was the one that we can stay connected to people around the world. This is completely true, especially since my best friend just recently moved to Germany. I talk to her every day like she is not only still in the states but right down the road.
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