At the Teachers Desk/Collaborative Blogging

This website is a very interesting and helpful one. It’s a collaborative blog put on my teachers where they all share ideas about their own classrooms. You can login and post your own ideas from the things you have done in your classroom and share your own projects with others.
This blog is something I could really see myself using when I become a teacher and even before then to get ideas. It is really a good thing when you can find things on the internet that lets other teachers help each other out. All of the posts were kept up to date and something new was always posted. I really enjoyed reading all of the posts and thought it was really cool when the teacher posted for help and got so many responses from teachers all around the world. This is just another great example of the great use of technology and always makes me think that I’m sure like 10 years ago, no one would have thought this kind of technology would exist.

A Big Whatever:

Mr. Weschs’ comments about the youth today are completely and unbelievably true. My generation is very much “me, me, me. I thought it was interesting how he talked about the different definitions of "whatever." Most of my teenage life I used the term “whatever” and never really realized it and how many times I said it.
One point he made was that people feel that the only way they can have a voice is through the media. The way the media has controlled everyone’s mind makes everyone’s mind believe the media is the only way to get their voice heard. Click Here to watch this video!

Why Student's Should post work to their blogs?

I think it is important to post assignments to blogs. Doing this allows the student and others to review their work and make improvements to it. Posting work to blogs and allowing comments allows for constructive criticism and positive reinforcement. The assignment that we are doing, Comments4Kids, is a great example of this. We, as students are posting positive words to these students about their work they have done and in turn make them feel good about what they are doing.
Posting works to blogs is also good because it allows the parents to be involved with their child’s work and progress in the classroom. This also gives good example to allow the parent, child and teacher to be collaborative in improvements with the student.
Watch this blog to know more about blogging.

ACCESS

The Alabama State funded program is called Alabama Connecting Classroom Educators and Students Statewide or ACCESS program. ACCESS gives the teachers the tools that they need by giving them the opportunity to participate in online workshops which connects with staff from ACCESS for support and advice. This program began in 2004 and was started by our Governor Bob Riley to give all students higher than middle school an equal learning environment.
ACCESS stands for Alabama Connecting Classrooms, Educators, and Students Statewide. This program allows students in public schooling to take classes online. This is a great idea for those students in the public schools that may not have access to certain classes or access in the school to the resources. The only holdback is that this is only open to high school students but with that comes with that it is open to any and all high school student in public schools, no matter where you are in the state of Alabama.

Alex

Alex is a website designed for parents, teachers, and really anyone who needs to teach the subject at hand. It has wonderful resources all for free. They have lesson plans, teaching materials, ideas for teachers and parents and so many other things to look at and use. They are all free and that is a plus for teachers and parents to have free materials and tools at their hands.
I think it is very interesting and really neat that it is available to parents as well so that they can help the student as needed and have their own materials for at home use. This website is a must have on every teacher and parents bookmarks and favorites.

Dear Kaia

Mr. Chamberlain’s class was commenting on Kaia's Blog. One day, her dad noticed the comments and got in contact with Mr. Chamberlain and they began skyping. Since Kaia could not read at the time, Mr. Chamberlain’s class made a voice thread so she could hear what the class was saying about her blogs.
Over time, her father became a little worried and concerned about Kaia’s pictures and everything being all over the internet which is completely understandable but the pro’s vastly outweighed the con’s about sharing his daughter with the world.
I think it is amazing that we are able to contact people across the world and all because of a blog that was found and comments started going on it. It proves that people can see everything you do online and someone in a different country can see your blog but they may not comment on it, but they are reading it and I think it is amazing.

Wendy Drexler: The Networked Student

This video showed a really great and cool technique. I honestly never really realized how important networking is until this class. My mom is a realtor and everyone in her office is constantly networking and they use facebook to get out to the public about their listings which is interesting since in this class we have talked several times about people not reading newspapers anymore, anything and everything can be found online. It almost makes me feel weird because for the first time, my mom’s peers knew more about networking and other tech tools that I did not know even existed. This video has done a great job of showing just far someone can get with the right information and resources.
I am really looking forward to expanding my network. This class has done a wonderful job of preparing me for what is to come later in my career.

New Media Literacies

The New Media Literacy is a project started by MIT. They focus on ways to prepare students for 21st century technology. This program wants to educate people on technology and provide information on how to participate with the media.

In this video, the people in this project talk about how you need these certain skills to be able to successfully use technology. I fully agree with them because these skills are necessary to be fully capable of using this technology and technology is advancing every single day and without these skills, you may fall behind. Some of the skills that were discussed are judgment, multitasking, and negotiation. Here is a youtube video of the NML.

Richard Miller: This is How we Dream

I agree with Richard Miller. We are definitely pushing ourselves to the limit with gaining more knowledge. We used to think that the teacher in the classroom was the only source of learning what we needed to but we are learning more and more everyday that this is not true. The use of computers, the technology becoming readily available is helping make it possible to have other sources of learning other than what is in the classroom. In our own classroom, we have skyped with several people who are half way across the world many hours ahead of us and it was free to talk to them and we can learn a lot about another culture by doing this. This is not to say that the old techniques of pencil and paper are being ruled out completely but that we are coming up with new ways of learning and new ways are coming at us faster than I can keep up. This technology that the students use will make them prepared for the real world. I have a cousin that is 12 years old and knows a lot more about some of this stuff and it is shocking because I thought I was fairly knowledgeable in this area and that was a little scary.

Ipods in Instruction

Duke University in North Carolina was the first college to give students the use of the Ipods in the classroom. Ever since, there have been more schools followed this trend set by Duke. I personally feel that this is a great idea but there are some I’m sure that disagree with this idea as some students cannot afford them and some see these as a distraction and that everyone should stick to the textbook learning idea. Using Ipods in instruction means that students no longer have to stress about absolutely having to be in the classroom in case they are sick are have an emergency. I really feel like a big weight would be lifted from the students by using the Ipods. I know I stress out big time if I have an illness but still need to go to class but just do not have that energy or if I have an emergency come up and can’t attend class, I always stress about notes and everything else that happened in class.

Itunes U

ITunes University would be a very useful tool to have in the classrooms. Not just in the classrooms, but since it is on ITunes, it can be accessed outside the school. This is another example from earlier in the semester that schools are slightly becoming very dependent on technology and that it is becoming that the computers are teaching the kids, but with this in a way it’s a little bit of that but not. Students and teachers can access this, it’s a free service. Teachers can upload their lecture podcasts on here and a student can access it at any time if they missed a class or needs to go and fill in their notes.
All in all, this is a really good tool to have in the classrooms and after exploring ITunes U, it is already being used by many universities and other schools. Click Here for information about Stanford University using ITunes U.

Dr. Alice Christie

I viewed the Google earth portion of this website by Dr. Alice Christie. I found this section to be very informative as I could see myself using this tool in the classrooms. I have already had experience playing around with Google earth as my mom is a realtor and they use this tool a lot. I showed my dad this section of the website since he is always asking me “How do I do this?” and other questions about Google earth and he has not stopped thanking me for that and he has stopped with the questions for the most part. To use this in the classroom I found it really cool that she put up the teacher and student friendly search engines.