Sunday, February 28, 2010
Friday, February 26, 2010
PLN so far
I still do not think that I am gaining the full benefit from my Personal Learning Network. I feel as if I were able to devote more of my time searching an learning from the different blogs that I am following I would be gaining a lot more from this. I seem to be benefiting most from my rss feeds along with the different sites I have tagged on my delicious site rather than Twitter. I am still having a harder time adapting to how this fits into my PLN. I am interested in trying out one of the "webinar's?" I think that this would be interesting and a new experience for me to check out and see what I would be able to gain from something like this. As a whole I think that there is a lot more to gain from a PLN than I have recently been able to do. I think that it is a great way to communicate with others who are interested in the same things and be able to pick up and throw around various ideas.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Do Teachers/Professors have an obligation to be interesting?
I found this question on one of McLeod's blog postings and thought that this was almost a "dumb" question to ask. Yet at the same time, how often have we all had teachers that just bore you to death causing your head to nod. Though this question seems to be easy to answer, I feel as if many of these professors and teachers really have this as a top priority. Personally I have a hard time engaging myself into something that I do not find intrest in. I know that there are things that certain people may just not have any desire to learn about, however, if it is not presenting in such a way many students may not even give it a chance.
Google Docs
http://www.flickr.com/photos/manfrys/ / CC BY-SA 2.0
This is the first time that I have been introduced to Google Docs, and I am wishing that this wasn't the case. Last semester I was assigned a group research project, and we had to write a collaborative paper. For one, I am not a fan of the idea of having a group of four people write one paper. Everyone has different writing styles and it becomes nearly impossible sometimes to be able to work around everyones schedules to meet. However; I think that had I been introduced to this sooner, or had the professor recomend a tool such as this, that it could have solved some of those difficulties.
Since I am now more aware of this collaborative tool, I can see how different group papers and projects and papers would be a better idea. This would especially be nice for high schoolers and possibly even middle school students to be able to work as a group outside of the classroom. Many times students at this age would have a hard time meeting for transportation reasons. Also, since group work such as this could be a newer introduction, this would give the teacher the opportunity to give feedback throughout the assignment and the ability to guide them in the right direction.
Google Docs gives the students another opportunity to work with technology in the classroom, and expand their options when doing projects such as this.
This is the first time that I have been introduced to Google Docs, and I am wishing that this wasn't the case. Last semester I was assigned a group research project, and we had to write a collaborative paper. For one, I am not a fan of the idea of having a group of four people write one paper. Everyone has different writing styles and it becomes nearly impossible sometimes to be able to work around everyones schedules to meet. However; I think that had I been introduced to this sooner, or had the professor recomend a tool such as this, that it could have solved some of those difficulties.
Since I am now more aware of this collaborative tool, I can see how different group papers and projects and papers would be a better idea. This would especially be nice for high schoolers and possibly even middle school students to be able to work as a group outside of the classroom. Many times students at this age would have a hard time meeting for transportation reasons. Also, since group work such as this could be a newer introduction, this would give the teacher the opportunity to give feedback throughout the assignment and the ability to guide them in the right direction.
Google Docs gives the students another opportunity to work with technology in the classroom, and expand their options when doing projects such as this.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Etherpad experience
The day after finding and looking more into etherpad, I personally came acrossed an oportunity to use it myself in a classroom. We were put into groups and had a two paragraph response to some questions that we needed to come up with, which then needed to be posted on our wiki site. Instead of just coming up with our ideas and having one person type them up, I suggested that we try using the Etherpad website, this way we could all see what was being typed and not just one person would be responsible. It worked great! Many of the students in my group enjoyed using this tool and made a point in bookmarking themselves for future use.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
http://www.ted.com/
I had to watch this video in my Diversity in Child & Adolescent Literature class this semester and found it to be quite eye opening, and if you have the time I highly suggest you viewing it yourself! After taking the Childrens Literature prerequisite I was able to recognize a lot more things that had not been apparent to me after reading a "simple" children's book. This current class is showing me how these books are able to have such a huge impact on the way children view themselves and even others. I found it intriguing how her limited access to books, changed the way she saw herself, which really wasn't herself at all, and how once she was exposed literature that was from a more familiar culture she shifted completely. She was also able to see how this "single story" that she was once exposed to changed the ways others viewed her and others that weren't commonly represented in literature.
It is amazing the influence the exposure to childrens books or lack there of, can have on children and even adults. Gradually it is becoming more and more apparent to me how important it is to choose a wide variety of content, and culture in the classroom library I have slowly been collecting. But to also be carefull the books I choose to represent these multiple cultures, and to make sure that they are addressed correctly with the right intentions. In order for us to change the way people view one another and make assumptions and stereotypes, they need to be exposed to the every aspect of the story.
Etherpad and TPACK
Etherpad is an online tool that can be used to simutaniously edit and create new documents calaboratively with others. Anything that is entered can be seen in real-time and each person is designated to his or her own color to varify who has typed in what. I can see this being used as tool for either brainstorming ideas in a classroom or even for practice in revising and editing. Assuming each child does not have access to their own computer right in the classroom, using a tool such as this in a computer lab would probably work best. I can see this possibly being a problem if you have a large classroom, since I believe there is a limit as to how many students would be able to have access all at once, however if they were split up into different groups having different topics or working on different pieces to revise this would help. When looking at the Technological Pedigogical Content Knowledge (TPACK), this seems to cover this model. Using the computer with typing skills, learning how to revise/brainstorm would cause them to pull from their current knowledge or come up with new ideas to help guide their learning with this particular tool. As far as a particular subject topic goes, I feel as if this could pretty much be used for any of them, but would no matter what target some writing skills. Brainstorming and revising are only a a couple ways in which this could be used, I thought of this with more upper elementary ages in mind.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Views on Twitter
I am still having a hard time getting into the swing of Twitter and "Tweeting", however I am aware that this can be used as a lot more that just posting to your followers what you plan on doing for the day. I can see how one could just get caught up in the celebrity gossip and news tweets and just use this as more of a socializing tool, things like this get addicting especially when people start to update every 5 minutes! I can also see how this could be a great networking tool for companies and people sharing ideas for certain professions or interests. If Twitter is being used on more of a professional level, I can see this being quite helpful to pass along ideas, thoughts and other helpful tools or websites.
I think can kind of see how Twitter can be used in a classroom setting, though I think one of the "knock off" sites that are similar might work a little better. I could see how if a teacher were trying to integrate Twitter in the classroom, it becoming more of a distraction. However, if the students had either a seperate account for the classroom or the teacher was using a different site, this might damper this problem. The teacher would be able to use this to possibly update the students on homework assignments, or even direct them towards helpful websites. I also think that the site we used the other day in our classroom used for poll taking or voting was a very helpful tool.
I know that there are also ways to join into some sort of discussion room at specific times. I think that this would be helpful for both in a classroom setting or in a professional matter. I am looking forward to looking into this a bit more and participating in one myself.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Photo Editing
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
I had a lot of fun doing this one! Just bummed that the photo quality didn't quite show up here, so click and view it on my Flickr acount if you'd like!
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
The Future :)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
Even though I still have another year here plus my year of student teaching left I am starting to get quite excited. I am completely fine with going an extra year, because the truth is I'm not ready to grow up into the big world yet!! However, once I am forced to move on to bigger and better things I think I will feel a lot more prepared to do so. I love being able to come home from a day of coaching, and always having a smile on my face no matter how stressful my day was prior, or what I have to come. You could say that this was one of my deciding factors after having my major be undecided for two years. Knowing that eventually I will be able to work with kids all the time makes me hopeful that this will be the same outcome, but I don't see how it couldn't seeing as they are always smiling. Excited for the future.
Monday, February 1, 2010
Some tech for thought
Some Other Ideas :)
link to slideshow
I found this slideshow while browsing through some different blogs by other educators. Some of the ideas in this slide show are already some of the tools that we have used already for this course but there are some other pretty clever yet simple ideas. Some of the websites may not be helpful until actually having your own classroom, however I can see some of them being helpful to us as students as well.
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