Podcasting

Podcasting is not a new idea for me. I have created my own video and audio podcasts for other classes. The podcast that I chose to listen to would be one by Dr. Kathy King and Mark Gura. The podcast that they created is about technology education.

http://teacherspodcast.org/2010/02/28/ep-55-virtualpres/

In the beginning of the podcast, they mention that they are going to have a new feature called "Teacher Feature" next episode. They mention just enough information to keep me hooked and if I remember listen to the next episode.

One of the first things that they start talking about is a feature that we have been using all semester called Voice Thread. From the first interaction with Voice Thread, I loved it. I think it is a fantastic tool that can be used within the classroom and outside of the classroom as well. Dr. King and Gura mention that it is going to improve the future and that power point is almost a thing of the past. It is something that is live, people can make comments about how to change something and you can do it in real time, you won't have to upload the powerpoint again. They also mention that it can be used for professional development. I like all of the ideas that they mentioned with the use of voice thread.

Another feature that they mention is Livesteam. I have not had the opportunity to use Livestream yet but how they were explaining it goes a little like this: It makes everything live, conferences, meetings, possibly even classroom discussions. Gura seemed that this was going to change the way how everything is going to be run mainly because it is available to everyone.

One last thing that they mention within their podcast would be that the Education Department is cutting the funding for Technology Education. By cutting it, they are actually including into the regular education budget rather than it having it's own special section. Gura again sees pros and cons for this. A pro is that technology is finally going to be integrated into the classroom and is thought of that way. A con would be that it may not receive the funding that it deserves.

Overall, it was a good podcast with a lot of information jammed packed into it. I think that it is great that it hits on current events in educational technology. In technology it is always good to be on top of the latest and newest information!

Magazine Cover

Here is my magazine cover from Mod 9. I left it on the computer at work by accident and had to wait to go to work to retrieve it again.

Thanks!!
Lauren

Hot Potatoes

Hot Potatoes is a website for a software download. The software can be used for making multiple choice questions, quizzes, crosswords, and matching. I like this idea because you can make different questions for different classes. I am not too sure about how intense the program is but you might be able to make different questions for different students.

This might be also very useful the substitute teachers, if the software is available at the school district. This is other constraint that not only substitute teachers and regular teachers might run into. A lot of times when you need to install software, you need permission from the IT department, and then they will install it.

It is a great tool. I am excited to use it more.

ePals Maps

The one part of Epals that I explored the most would be the Maps section. This also reminded me of the Google Maps. In our class we used to explore different parts of Buffalo. I feel that if you have Government or a Economics class that you will be able to use it for many reasons, especially because the students do not have to take a final test or have a regents exam. Because of this, the teacher can create something for the students to do for a final project. In most Government classes, the students are usually required to attended meetings such as School Board and Town Board meetings. With this map tool, the students can put where the students can mark where they attended and the they can write a brief description as to what happened at the meeting.

Magazine Cover

Here is something that I came up with:

I used the Big Huge Labs website.

They have a lot of useful tools to use technology within your classroom!!!

This magazine cover took me less than 10 minutes to complete (but then I spent another 30 trying to figure out how to get it on here). Now that I know how to do it I would totally use this in my classroom!! I explored the Big Huge Labs website and it was seriously impressive. I am excited to explore it more and find out some more things that I can use in the classroom!!!

Creative Commons

Below are different types of Creative Commons used on the photo sharing service called Flickr. Also, you see a picture from a beach in Hawaii. I used this picture because I wish the weather in Buffalo was warm enough to be on a beach right now!

Attribution: Let others to copy, distribute, display, & perform your copyrighted material.

>From my understanding, it is up to the person who uses the photo if they should give the original photographer credit.

Non-Commercial: Let others copy, distribute, display, & perform your work but only for non-commercial purposes.

No Derivative Works: Let others copy, distribute, display, & perform only verbatim copies of your work.

Share Alike: Allows others to distribute works only under license identical to the license that governs your work.

For now, I am still in Buffalo.

Ps: Go Sabres <3>

Photo by: bobistraveling

Micro-blogging

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!

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.

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.

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.

Did you know?

I watched the short video on YouTube called "Did you know". Some of the facts that were mentioned in the short video totally blew my mind. I feel that the number one thing that I could not believe that was in 2006, if MySpace was a country it would be the 8th largest country in the world.

I wonder what MySpace and Facebook are at today. I could not believe that one single social networking site had the potential to be the eight largest country in the whole world. Currently, Nigeria is the 8th largest country [by population] in the world. Below is the country and the flag from Nigeria. I wonder what the MySpace flag would look like?

The second thing that I found, I believe I want to say more hysterical than compelling would be that 2.7 billion searchers happen in one month on Google. The BG (Before Google) really makes me wonder. What did we do before Google? I would always ask my dad and it would depend on whether or not he knew. I also feel like I didn't ask too many questions or have to figure as much out BG. Maybe I wasn't as curious as I am today.

Of the Google products listed above in the picture, I use Google [the original search engine], Google talk [to talk to my best friend in Germany], Google Calendar [for me to stay organized everyday], and Gmail pretty much every day. I would now like to take the time to thank Google. Thank you Google.

Now that I am 22, going on 23, I just counted the number of jobs that I have held since I have been 15. Including the two sub positions I currently hold, I have worked 8 jobs since I have been 15. I feel like that I am on my way to fulfilling the stat of: 10-14 jobs by the age of 38. Especially in today's economy, people are being laid off and have to find other jobs. Not only that but they may have to pick up a second job to support their families, or themselves.

The two things that really didn't shock me at all about this short video are the new majors that are being developed that were not around 10 years ago. We live in an ever changing world, and studying in college will prepare those students for something that is going to happen in the future and we may not even know what it is. The last thing that didn't really shock me would be that 70% of 4 year-olds have used a computer. I think this may be because I have a little 3 year old cousin who doesn't really know how to use it but he watches videos and tries to play games. He really doesn't understand HOW to use it but like I said, he knows that the information is there for him.

With all of this being said, technology in the classroom is pretty much like a dinosaur compared to other aspects of a student's life. Students use google, email, social networking, youtube, and other internet resource sin every day life. Why do teachers have such a hard time using these technologies in the class room?

Safety

Safety with using not only blogs but the internet as a whole is important to our students and to ourselves. Students can be get into trouble with sharing personal information but we can get in trouble with things such as credit card fraud.

It is important for everything to:

1. Never share personal information about themselves on the internet [this even includes their screen name or their user name]
2. Make sure that students are going to websites that are trusted.
3. If you are going to be doing something on the internet with your students, possibly do a mini lesson on safety [and trusted websites and privacy policies]
4. Usernames and more importantly passwords should not be easy for people to guess.

Blogging in Professional Development

I believe that if a teacher blogs after every day, kind of like a journal than they will be able to see what is working in the classroom and what isn't working in the classroom. If the blog has been around for long enough, the teacher will also compare last year's classroom to their current classroom. I think it is a good idea for a teacher to start a blog, even if it is just for personal use. This would be good for personal reflection. When I was student teaching, I would always talk with the teacher I was paired with and reflect on the day, or even a certain class. I think that it was real helpful. I plan on always reflecting, even if it is with myself and a blog is a great way to do it.