Blog Post # 5

Eagle's Nest Radio & Class Blog

I am so impressed with these students! They are only in the third grade and already they are creating podcasts! When I was in third grade, those didn't even exist. In fact, until Thursday, I had never created one myself. It is so amazing to see such young students using technology like this to educate others. The podcast I listened to was on Ancient Rome and included several segments lead by different students who each told a different aspect of Anceint Roman life, from gladiators to architecture. I encourage you all to check out the work of these talented kids!



The Benefits of Podcasting in the Classroom

Before this week, I had really had no experience with a podcast. I knew what they were, but I had never seen any use for them for me personally, much less considered using them as a tool for education. Since making my own podcast with my group this week, I found that they can be very useful tools to spread information. Mr. Dell further proved his point with this blog post and video, in which he provides several reasons why podcasts are helpful in the classroom that I had not considered, specifically the creativity aspect. Like I said, I just recently worked in a group to make my own podcast. Lee, Sheena, and I were all sort of unsure of how to go about the project, but we ended up with a piece with a photo and  intro and outro music. This part of the process was really enjoyable, just fiddling with the program and seeing what we could do with it to make our project more special. I could definitely see using these in classes, like the third graders I mentioned above. It seems like a great way to introduce kids to technology as well as encourage their creativity. 

Practical Principals

This is a podcast done by two principals, Melinda Miller who is an elementary principal near Springfield, Missouri, and Scott Elias who is an assistant principal at a middle school in northern Colorado. The podcast I listened to was from the summer, and the two of them were discussing the things that they as principals and other principals should be doing in the schools and share information back and forth with each other and others. This is a good example of a use for a podcast. If one was an aspiring principal or was one already, this would be extremely helpful because in this podcast they talked a lot about what they were each personally going to do to approach the start of the year. 

My Timetoast Time Line

This is a timeline of the birth dates and wedding dates of everyone in my family, starting with the weddings of each of my grandparents and ending with the birth of my youngest cousin last month.

Blog Post # 4

To visit the articles/videos to which I refer, please click the titles of each.

Don't Teach Your Kids This Stuff, Please

The creator of this poem, Dr. Scott McLeod is a professor at Iowa State University and is the director of the UCEA Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE), which is the nation’s only academic center dedicated to the technology needs of school administrators. Dr. McLeod is also the co-creator of the video, Did You Know? (Shift Happens), which we were required to watch and write about previously in this class.

Dr. McLeod brings up the importance of teaching children about technology, including the use of Twitter and Facebook. I liked the way that he argued for his points, by asking others to please NOT teach their children these things and then see who is further ahead in the future, the children who learned about technology or those who were sheltered from it because of the possible dangers that can be online. I believe that he is right. If we teach children now about technology, rather than sheltering them from it because they could get into trouble, it will be helpful to them. With the way that technology is always changing and advancing, it is a good idea to go ahead and teach children at least a little about it to set them up for success in the future.



The iSchool Initiative

The student in this video is proposing a major change in the way that schools operate. He and his organization are proposing the use of the iTouch in the classroom, in place of pens, paper, maps, and textbooks. The idea is to save the schools money, since the budgets are constantly being cut, and to employ technology that is already available today through various applications on the iTouch. From reading some of the comments posted on this video, I learned that this organization has moved past talking about their plans. They have actually put iTouches into classrooms and are utilizing them everyday.

My reaction to this video was surprise! When I was in high school (not so long ago, I graduated in '09) we were not allowed to have iPods or cell phones at school. Of course, we did it anyway, we just were not allowed to have them out during class and if they were seen they were taken away. What this organization is proposing is incredible and, I think, a very good idea. I have an iPhone 3G myself, and I know that there are so many applications available in the App Store for whatever you could possibly want or need. Just yesterday I added a dictionary app, run by dictionary.com. To make use of these things, many of which are free after the initial cost of the iTouch, is a really great idea!

The Lost Generation

I really enjoyed this video! The way that it first started out seemed really depressing. The poem spoke of the new societal norms, like the divorce rate and the fact that people no longer seem to care about the environment. It talked about this "lost generation" and how there was nothing that she could do about it. Then everything changed. By simply reading her poem backward, the speaker turned a message that was depressing and dull into one of determination to change everything that was wrong with the world.

 I felt that the way that they presented the information was perfect! It not only spoke about reversing the societal norms, it actually did. I probably would not have caught that she was using the exact same words in a different order had they not been playing backward on the screen. Whoever created this video did an amazing job. I would strongly encourage everyone to watch this video. It takes a message of discouragement and makes it uplifting simply by turning everything around. Literally.




Virtual Choir

This project was really cool. Eric Whitacre took 185 people who had never met one another and turned them into a choir through the internet! I would never think to do something like this, but the result was beautiful. Their voices combined so nicely and they were not even together to create this video. Isn't it amazing what you can do through the internet?

Teaching in the Twenty-First Century

This video started out by making a point that I was thinking of while watching the iSchool initative videos. Teaching is not just about teaching kids the facts and figures, the dates or the formulas anymore. They have Google for that. Anything they might ever want to know can be found online very easily, just by clicking on your favorite search engine. This video points out that teachers are not the main sources of information anymore. We are the "filters".

 It is our job to teach students how to use the resources that technology provides for them, and about things like integrity and honesty, because they may not learn them anywhere else.We should also teach them ways to make technology work for them. Twitter does not have to be only about telling the world what you ate for breakfast, after all. It can be, and is, a tool for sharing information beyond that to your entire social network. In short, we need to find ways to use technology in the classroom, because it is becoming more and more important everyday.

Blog Post # 3

A Vision of Students Today

I think that this video is a pretty accurate portrayal of students' lives and work loads today. I know for me personally the parts about the amount of reading I am supposed to do versus the amount that I actually get done seems pretty close. I have also seen a ton of people in class on their laptops, instead of doing school work, looking at facebook or twitter and not even paying attention. I might be tempted to do the same, but I almost never bring my laptop to class.

Seeing that students have 26 1/2 hours worth of work to do in a given 24 hour period sort of surprised me, but I could see where it might be even more than that for some people. I know that on a typical school day I spend way more than three hours in class, since I take 5 classes this semester. There are probably plenty of students that are going to school full time and working full time as well, so that would put them with quite a bit more to get done in a day than those who do not work or only work part time. Looking at it this way, of course we have to learn to be multi-taskers, otherwise nothing would get done!


It's Not About the Technology

I could not agree more with this article! All of the technology you can have in the classroom really amounts to nothing without a teacher who truly cares about the success and education of his or her students. This includes, as Ms. Hines stated, self-motivation and continued learning beyond the four years or so that is spent in college.

Technology can be brought into the classrooms and then be ignored by teachers who are unwilling or uninterested in spending a little of their time trying to find ways to implement it into their curriculum. While I was in school, I had teachers who had taught my older cousins or even my parents who were still using the same methods that they used with them. For one of my math teachers, even though there were a few computers in the classroom, I never saw them turned on and the students were always forbidden to touch them. She preferred to teach from the board like she had always done. Even though she had the technology in her classroom, she was not willing to make use of it, and that is Ms. Hine's point. Teachers have to be perpetual learners n order for technology to be a success in the classroom.

"Is it Okay to be a Technologically Illiterate Teacher?

Though Mr. Fisch says that this post was written in a moment of frustration and may be a little harsh, I think that it is completely true. Mr. Fisch compares not being technologically literate to not being able to read or to understand math. I had never looked at it this way, but he is absolutely right. At least having some degree of technological literacy is a necessary quality in a teacher, arguably in anyone in this day and age.

Technology cannot be ignored, because it is all around us. Having at least basic technology down is crucial, because things are being incorporated into the classroom that require it. Most classrooms now have computers and many have smart boards. When I was younger, that wasn't the case. Teachers that were teaching before these additions have had to make adjustments, but they are necessary and I would assume worth it in the long run.


Gary's Social Media Counts



This media counter really just proves the points made by the authors above. Times they are a changing. Technology has become a huge part of our lives and teachers should be able to at least have some basic knowledge about it. We need to stay on top of things as much as possible in order to be able to incorporate new things into the classroom.

C4T #1-2 Summary Post

For my C4T I was assigned the blog of Larry Ferlazzo.

I found the first post that I commented on extremely interesting. It was a post of twelve photos of street art, created in areas in which artists could see potential for a scene (For instance, one was the railing for a staircase over which someone had added a young girl sliding down it like a slide). My response to the post was basically thanking him for posting it and being impressed with the creativity of the people who saw the ideas where people would normally just see a street grate or a stairwell.

The second post I commented on was about organizations in California and other areas that move into low income areas and organize people to better education through the means that they, the organizations not the people, feel is best. My response was that I had never really considered the issue, but that I agreed that it seemed these groups were only out to promote their interests.

Mr. Ferlazzo's blog is updated very often and contains a lot of interesting links and blogs, so I would encourage anyone interested to check it out through the link below.

http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/

Presentation #5