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

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wwworks/ / CC BY 2.0

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.

Views on Twitter

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cambodia4kidsorg/ / CC BY 2.0

     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.

Photo Editing

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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!

The Future :)

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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.

Some tech for thought

I found this picture and quote and it kinda got me thinkin. I as I'm sure a lot of others am guilty of texting or using my itouch in class, but it blows my mind that there are ways to use them in the classroom as a teaching tool. I my first experience with something like this was in our last class when we were able to send in our vote by either text or twitter, and it was graphed right for us on the screen! I would love to find other ways of how things such as this are used. I was able to find a sight that had different ipod applications that were considered to be helpful (http://web.me.com/crrichardson/Title_IID_Grant/iPod_touch_in_Education.html), however I have yet to check any of them out but am looking forward to it! Though I think that these could be great tools, I think the problem with relying on such things in the classroom would be the lack of resources such as the ipods and phones themselves. I know that it is safe to say that most students due own these things but there are also many who do not. I love the idea of using all this technology in the classroom and I am finding that there are many great tools, I am just wondering how available they will be when actually in the classroom.

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.