The Blog I've Been Following

For the last several weeks, I've been following Ewan McIntosh's edu.blogs.com (as a matter of fact, they follow me, as I signed up to have anything he adds or write sent immediately to my inbox!) What I continue to find so striking about his blog is the way he thinks and how he manages to look at things, whether seemingly educational or not, from an educational point of view! To me, this is a true educator, the person who can find the teachable moments in everything. His latest post is about Anil Dash and a very interesting presentation he made recently as he "Defended the Indefensible." Wonderful viewpoints - many that I don't agree with, but how wonderful to get students to look at a different perspective on things! He writes, "I actually thought this whole question would make an interesting exercise with youngsters in the classroom - what have they seen that is indefensible, and can they make it completely defensible using the facts, history and a good bit of empathy?" As an English teacher, it's what I will strive to do every minute of the day!

When I first began to receive emails from this blog, I wasn't too sure - as there was a video he posted about gaming taking over the world that completely disturbed me, although he seemed to think it was cool. I was disturbed by all the images of NYC being crushed to bits of pixels (by popular, sometimes old-fashioned, video games, hence the idea of gaming taking over the world.) But I found many of his ideas intriguing and links he posts to things that he finds intriguing, so I continued on. Another one of my favorites, "Alice Born Digital: How Transmedia Storytelling Becomes a Billion Dollar Business." I'll keep up with this blog even beyond the scope of this Teaching with Technology course.

My Final Project

Ultimately, I learned that I love all this technology! I spend hours working on all these assignments and don't realize how long or how hard I've worked until it's completed and I see how much time has passed, or I look at the final product and realize, "THAT'S what I just did?!" I'm surprised to actually write that - I always knew I liked technology but didn't realize how MUCH, or how addicting it could be. I also didn't realize how easy many of my ideas would be to implement, so that I was able to create more than I originally planned. With all this, I feel that it's even easier to have a better understanding of students today, what they like and why - how they must feel as they're working on something or looking back on something they've accomplished. It's great to be put into their shoes, it always gives me a better perspective to figure out how to teach them better!

When I presented my PowerPoint to the class, many of my classmates complimented my presentation, so that was exciting! I was pretty frustrated that the sound didn't work on Slideshare, but now that I've worked with it a great deal more, I believe you have to download the presentation to your computer in order to hear and see it properly! This presentation was a little bit more challenging because I had so many things to make sure to present information on, AND make it as interesting as possible! To be honest, I am happy with the finished product (one of my newest favorite things is adding audio to PowerPoint presentations), but there are a couple of things I'd like to still learn for next time. There's always more to learn! I'd like to learn how to embed any videos I want to show into the actual PowerPoint so that you're not steered away from the presentation. I feel that makes the presentation a little jarring, and I like (visually) to be able to focus just on the video and not everything else that would be on the screen, from say, a site like Youtube.

Had I more time, I would also like to learn Prezi - it's probably not difficult, just takes some time to learn and get used to. The first time I ever saw a presentation using Prezi, I thought it was the worst presentation I had ever seen! I immediately was dizzy and nauseous from it, and the presenter also was nervous and went way too quickly! Within this class, I could see that it's actually a very cool, very unique way of presenting information that I would actually like to try (and time it appropriately to avoid motion sickness!) The most important thing here, though, is clearly my willingness to try anything new in technology, as now my attitude is one of, "I'm sure I could do that..." rather than, "Wellllll..." Two very different approaches; one of them will make my students way happier! I'll let you guess which one.

I'm not sure that the actual presentation would be useful in a classroom, unless it were a classroom full of colleagues who were trying to learn all about the web-based activities I was teaching. However, the content of the presentation (and the lesson I included): the actual web-based activities are perfect for the classroom as they provide the collaboration, interaction, path to using higher order thinking skills, and the use of technology that students obviously love to work with.

Newsletter for Parents

About...of all things...blogging! Imagine that.

Communication is extremely important between parents and teachers, even if parents aren't sure of how involved they want to be in their child's education. You would hope that they'd want to be extremely involved, while allowing their child to take some responsibility, however, the most important thing that teachers can do is provide access to information. We are all human beings; students can misunderstand what the teacher has said or expects from students. Certainly, teachers can think they're being clear and students can think that they're understanding, yet the appropriate message is not getting across. Having another party (i.e. parents) in the mix to either ask questions or know information can be helpful at time. Additionally, it gives students a greater sense of importance regarding their education, to know that their parents are involved in communication with their teachers.

I plan to communicate with parents at the beginning of the year through a newsletter similar to this, probably utilizing the old standby - paper! Once I establish communication with parents, I will find out who/how many have access to the Internet and exactly what kind of group I'm working with this year. It may be that they're all working parents who have access to their emails and the Internet on a daily basis, so that we can incorporate technology appropriately into our communication. However, if I'm in a lower socioeconomic district where their Internet/email access is limited, I wouldn't want to exclude anyone from information so I might chose communication in print as well as through technology (such as a wiki.)

Next time, I'd like to try Glogster, or even creating podcasts or imovies/videos with the students to share with parents! It would depend on what we have access to in our schools.

We used Letterpop for this parent newsletter because Jen had already used it before, said it was fairly easy to use and then started (easily) a new letterpop newsletter. However, we all could not edit at the same time, and even had trouble working with it when someone else was not editing it! While everyone contributed, because of time constraints, I had to begin again from scratch and was surprised to find it to be limited compared to what I would have liked to have done! I would rather have had the videos embedded, instead of a link to them, for example. I also didn't feel like I had so much control over formatting and other stylized graphics. However, it's always been wonderful to collaborate with my group! Next time, if I had more time, I would try to figure out Glogster for this type of project (I had started doing that, but it was taking a long time to figure certain things out) so that I could embed videos and check out what their graphics situation is.

All in all, I was very happy with our newsletter!

Four Models of Teaching

The four models of teaching include behavioral systems (direct instruction), information processing (inquiry training), social-interactive (cooperative learning), personal (individual instruction.) All remind me of methods of teaching that we learned in our Engligh methods class last semester, yet all can utilize some form of technology! Smartboards can be used for direct instruction, WebQuests (or Web Inquiry Projects) can be used for inquiry training, wikis (and of course WebQuests) can be used for the social-interactive model of instruction, and finally blogging can be used for the personal model where students can use that as a creative form of self-expression.

Textbooks...will they even be in our future?

The jury is still out on this for me! To read the text in print, to read it on a computer screen, or even to listen to it being read to me.... What's right for me may not be right for someone else.

I had a job where I was editing 60-80 page scripts on a daily basis, and oftentimes had to print them out to be able to read them efficiently and edit them well. I'm sure this is because of my own background, and the fact that I am a digital immigrant. But someone growing up with only all this technology surrounding them, may feel that their skills, in that same position I was in, would have been more accurate if they were reading and editing scripts straight onto the computer screen. While it's more convenient and easier on the environment, I do envision a time when there aren't any physical textbooks, and the tops of students' desks become computer screens that students manipulate easily during class (that contain all their notes and textbooks they could ever need in a lifetime), I'm not sure that it's right for all styles of learning...yet.

All that being said, I can see how much more of an exciting experience it would be for today's learners if they were reading a cd on their computer and could click on a link that could take them to more information or perhaps better information (i.e. primary sources, rather than simply reading about something, they could look at the actual documentation or video of what they're reading about.)

Learning Styles 2.0

What an eye-opening article - to truly begin to see students' learning styles from yet another point of view. As today's students are born into this technologically advanced world, it is second nature for them - it's a natural way for some of them to learn. I see it with my own daughter who at 3 and 1/2 years old can immediately understand how to manipulate the keyboard on our laptop the moment after I explain it to her. There are many students who's learning styles are just going to be set up to learn better in a multi-tasking environment that is digitally advanced and expressive (through blogging, wikis, podcasts, twitter, etc.) No matter what, though, isn't it all about trying to reach every student, no matter how they need to learn? Technology, especially emerging technology is something all students get fired up about - and can be differentiated for the variety of students we have. So to me, it seems like a fairly obvious way to go when thinking about new ways to motivate our students about their education.

Redefining Literacy

I have been utilizing the Internet as the vast source of information and research that it is for over a decade now, and it is true that this data smog can easily become overwhelming get in the way of what you're trying to accomplish. There is so much out there that it's hard to sift through everything to get to what you really need and want; oftentimes out of frustration you end up going with the first few things you find (which may not always be what it is you're looking for!) We must take media literacy into account and actually teach it, as an extension of literacy itself, allowing time for students to learn how to evaluate the information they find for its accuracy, relevancy and authority. I loved the DISCOVER acronym: Define, Inquire, Search, Collect, Organize, Verify, Express, and Reflect!