My EDM 310 Blog Assignments are Now Complete.

I really enjoyed taking this class with everyone. Thanks for the great teamwork! Everyone was very helpful and made it fun to come to class. Thanks to Mr. Sullivan for being a great teacher with a good heart.

Thoughts on Tools Covered in Class

Blogs

A tool I intend to use in the classroom is a blog. I will use it, not only for my benefit, but for my students and their parents. This will give me another means of communication with my students’ parents and my students. I will be able to provide information about me, information about the school, information on student work, and student projects. I can post a calendar of events and homework assignments so parents will always know what is happening. The options are endless when it comes to blogging and would be very beneficial in the classroom.

Spreadsheets

I will be able to use spreadsheets for a variety of tasks in the classroom. I can use it to store my student’s data regarding many areas, to create multiplication tables, or currency tables. Knowing the formulas will reduce the amount of time in creating the tables and will ensure accuracy.

Google Tools

I feel Google tools would be very useful to me as a teacher, as well as my students. There are many tools available that I would use for everyday classroom duties such as the documents tool, form builder, spreadsheets, and presentation creator. Google tools can be accessed anywhere there is an internet connection. I would allow my students to use their creativity to produce presentations using the presentation creator. They would also be able to use the documents tool to create a story, a poem, write a letter, etc. The students would be able to save their work so it doesn’t get lost and share their work with the teacher or anyone else they wish. Google tools is something new to me, but now that I am using it, I have found it to be a wonderful resource that I will continue to use.

Picasa

Picasa is something I will use as a teacher in creating presentations such as powerpoints, as well as other projects that will involve my students. My students will also be able to use Picasa for their presentations. This again will allow them to use their creativity. There are many tools available for editing photos and enhancing them.

ALEX

ALEX will be a very useful tool to me when I start teaching in many ways. There are several features that I know I will use often. The lesson plan feature will be very helpful and time saving. This will allow more time to devote to carrying out the plan effectively. The personal workspace feature will allow me to store and organize my lesson plans as well as submit them to be considered for adding to the ALEX lesson plans. The professional learning feature will be one of the most useful tools. The areas on this feature are very motivating to me as a teacher to be the best that I can be and to know that there is always room for improvement. ALEX is an awesome tool for educators and students allowing them more opportunities to expand learning and is something that I look forward to using.

ACCESS

ACCESS stands for Alabama Connecting Classrooms, Educators, and Students Statewide. This is a web-based program that allows students to take advanced placement courses, electives, or other courses that are not offered at their school. ACCESS Distance Learning provides every student an equal opportunity to achieve their goals no matter what their limitations are at the school they attend. Students will get instruction from highly qualified teachers who are provided with multimedia and technology tools for effective teaching. Not only will students interact with teachers, they will be able to interact with other students. ACCESS offers web-based courses as well as interactive video conferencing courses. The online courses can be synchronous or asynchronous. Using ACCESS will allow students to reach for the stars.

ITunes

I feel iTunes would be a very helpful tool to me as a teacher in many ways. If I need supplemental information on a particular subject, I could put in my key words in the search tool and within seconds have many tools to choose from. Another great feature is that you can be anywhere to access it. You can access it through your IPod, phone, Mac, or PC. This would be a great way to maximize your time while in the car or in an airplane. There are great organizational tools available as well. You can organize your tracks in folders for easy access. I know how crazy and full my days are, but knowing I can go to a specific folder and find everything I need in one place makes for a better day.

Podcasts

I will definitely use podcasts as a teaching and learning tool for my students. I could do my own podcast on a particular subject and let my students listen to them in a listening center and have some sort of task assigned with it for my students to complete. I would also have my students create their own podcast. This would allow them to not only learn about the particular subject they will be speaking on, but show their creativeness and have fun along the way. This would be another option besides a pencil and paper test.

Delicious

I have found Delicious to be a great social bookmarking tool to have available to me. This is a great way to organize websites that I visit often for easy access. There is also a link to see the list of the most popular bookmarks. By adding my friends and my family members to my network, I can view their interesting bookmarks.

iPod As A Teaching Tool

There has been a new approach to using technology in the classroom over the last several years. According to the article found at Click Here, Duke University distributed iPods to all of its freshmen in 2004. Critics said this will be a distraction and will send the wrong message to the students. A Duke official stated, “The goal of the giveaway is education, not entertainment.” Some of the uses for the iPod mentioned in the article are to listen to assigned songs or audio clips in music or foreign language courses, record interviews in the field, and record lectures.

After researching other uses of iPods in the classroom, I found great suggestions on the Classroom 2.0 website. I have listed below some suggestions from the website from teachers around the world.

· Download audiobooks on iPods for listening centers
· Download lectures
· Download special recordings
· Create videos for download
· Students could create content based on class curriculum
· Research and writing
· Share and critique work
· Making podcasts

Dr. Alice Christie's Resources for Educators

I found Dr. Alice Christie’s Website to be very helpful and informative. Some of the topics she discusses on her site are: educational technology, classes, workshops, GPS and Geocaching, searching the web, web design, publications, photography and consulting. I especially liked the information she had regarding rubrics under the educational technology section.

I find rubrics to be a little difficult to create at times. Dr. Christie lists many great ideas for rubrics that will be useful to me as a teacher when technology is involved. She has rubrics already created for the following: Adobe Acrobat, Digital Imaging, Electronic Portfolio, HyperStudio, Inspiration, iMovie, iMovie Video Production, Powerpoint, and Web Evaluation. I wouldn’t know where to even begin when creating a rubric when technology is involved, so this site is awesome.

Chrome OS

Chrome OS is a new operating system that Google will be putting on the market in about a year. Google is already branded really well and is well established in the search engine world, so they might do really well with this new operating system, but it just depends on how simple and effective it will be. Because of Google’s initial marketing approach in starting their operating systems on netbooks, its impact on education will probably be slow at first. Most educational research done on the computer is done from an already existing pc that has windows. Until current networks of computers used in schools become obsolete and need to be replaced, Chrome OS will not have the opportunity to compete against windows. If they want to make an impact, they should give away computers with their operating system to children in the schools.

Reflections on Randy Pausch's Last Lecture

Randy Pausch was such an inspirational individual that seemed to love life and absolutely loved his career. In his speech, he talked about being a professor at Carnegie Mellon. He was so passionate about everything he was involved in and would go to extreme links to get around the rules if it meant he could be involved in something really great. One example of this he gave was when his students had an opportunity to visit NASA but no teachers were permitted to go, so he read through the rules and noticed that reporters were permitted to attend. You can fill in the rest of the blanks. Randy Pausch was clever in more than one way and one statement he made, which makes sense, was to always bring something to the table and you will fill more welcome.

He talked about hitting brick walls. He stated that brick walls are there for a reason. Randy said, “They let us prove how badly we want things.” This statement is so true in everyday life. We run into brick walls on a daily basis and how you respond to it is the test. He also talked about indirect learning, which he called “head fake” learning. Basically this meant you have to make them think they are learning something else having fun learning something hard.

He didn’t teach with textbooks. In his Virtual Reality class, they had project after project. The students were able to focus on learning to work with each other. He didn’t give them a whole lot of direction with these projects so they wouldn’t be limited on what they could do. They learned from each other and from trial and error. When the students came back from working on their first project, he was so blown away that he really didn’t know what to say. He didn’t want to limit them, so he said, “You did great, but I know you can do better.” This way they can reach for the stars.

In the lessons learned segment of his speech he talked about parents, mentors, and students. He talked about his experiences and gave very good advice. Some of the advice he gave was to never lose childlike wonder, care about others, you can’t get there alone, tell the truth, apologize when you screw up, focus on others, don’t complain but work harder, and be prepared. I think we all can learn lessons from viewing this video. If we follow his advice, I feel we can all live very fulfilling lives.