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!

Classroom 2.0 For All Ages

As a soon-to-be English teacher for grades 7-12, I'm very used to discussing the fact that we should be integrating technology into those classrooms and finally, how to make that happen. What I can't get over is the thought of doing this for a 1st grade classroom! But I can see, even with my nieces and nephews, as digital natives, all of this is common knowledge for them. For older generations, often there's a fear that goes along with technology, but when you're born into it, that sense of fear just isn't there. It's part of the normalcy of every day life... the real question becomes, what will they be up to when they get to my classroom in the middle/high school?! Will they be bored of blogging (something that still excites me!) What will be next? Just proving once again that this is all a lifelong learning process!

Slideshare

My first impression of Slideshare was that it was a great way to share presentations, hence the name. Easy to use. Since then, I've had to actually use it, and have had nothing but problems! Several times, going onto the site and working with it has shut down either the Internet or my entire computer. Not to mention the fact that my own presentation was going to be posted onto it for all to see... and not hear! And for all to see how "off" the formatting was from all the beautiful arrangements I made! Finally I set aside some time and took the opportunity to figure it out, and realized that if you download the presentation you want to see to your computer, all will be well! Like magic, the presentation can be seen exactly how its author meant for it to be seen. Now I get it!

Learning by Doing...

...and doing it digitally...especially using digital storytelling to tell this story! It's perfect. This extremely effective and inspiring video about 21st century learning tells how students want to be motivated to learn... it reminds me of wdydwyd, using images with text in it (although here they're moving images) to prove a point. I have not only watched this video several times, I've used it as well in at least one project for the Teaching with Technology class! I am always floored by some of the statistics in it, and how there are jobs that students today will have later in life that don't exist today. Because of this, as educators we must make sure that we're preparing our students as much as possible so that they're always on the cutting edge of knowledge. I believe very strongly in learning by doing, so I am always impacted whenever I see that one student who holds up the sign, "What are we learning by sitting here?"

LoTi

According to the two separate PowerPoint Presentations our class received, LoTi could stand for Levels of Teaching Innovation or Levels of Technology Implementation. Technology implementation does create innovative teaching, so it may not matter what the technical terminology is! In either case, the level of what I see currently in the school I work for is between 2-3. Sometimes, I can tell that teachers mean for a project they're exploring with students to be higher-level thinking and not all about the technology, but it ends up being that way because it's still so new. And other times, a teacher will come across some sort of WebQuest that really gets the students, thinking and inquiring into the process of what they're learning, where they are required to problem-solve and make decisions. I believe at this point, with all that I'm learning in this class, I will start out my teaching career at a level 4, where technology is integrated in such a way that it's considered routine working my way up (along with my students) to a 6. Apparently only 4.1% of NY schools are operating at this level (4), but it's only going to increase from here!

For Her!

This wdydwyd project is absolutely amazing, one that I would use with my students somehow if I was teaching high school. I am so inspired when I read and look at what other people have created - they're so moving! I love the idea of creating an image with text!!! I do wish I could have found a way to have made the text a more seamless part of the picture and not just a tag or caption. For example, I could have put a picture frame on the shelf in the background with the words on it, or it also would have been cool to make it look like it was stitched into her dress somehow... This is what happens when you have a wonderfully creative site like wdydwyd, then it feeds my creativity! The two sites I tried, tagsmaker and picfont both seemed to just be able to add the text on top of the picture submitted, which is a great start! I ended up using tagsmaker which was very easy! Now for the more complicated designs... always more to learn!

Inspiration from Inspiration

Mind-mapping is an incredible visual tool that I wish I had when I was in school - I am an extremely visual person, so this would have really helped clarify a lot of things for me and made them easier to remember. I also didn't understand, until I was older, how there was a rhyme and reason to what my teachers were doing. Usually it was just, "Now we're going to learn this..." This is why I chose the idea of outlining the 9th grade curriculum for ELA. When I have my own classroom, I am going to do this at the beginning of the year so that students know where we are heading and how everything that we're learning is connected! Of course, students will have a syllabus as well, but this kind of tool helps students to visualize the scope of the year. Hopefully, this will help students get excited for what's to come and possibly instill some patience - especially as not all students will enjoy every concept we study, so they'll see that there are other things ahead!

The most important thing that I am always learning, and did so from this activity as well, was to keep my students at the center of whatever I'm working on - to always be thinking, "How is this going to be useful and relevant for them?" Using Inspiration was great, although overwhelming, because there's so much to it, and so much choice! So in that way, it's hard to learn quickly - it takes a long time through trial and error for some of the more intricate details that I like to have. I can see that, as with everything else, the more I use it, the easier it will become. I'd like to try the other (free) web-based online mind-mapping tools as this one will not be free after a few more weeks!

There are so many more ways that I want to use this kind of visualization tool - not just at the beginning of the year but throughout! It can be used with all kinds of concept mapping learning/teaching strategies, as we organize our thoughts and concepts pertaining to character studies, themes, comparing and contrasting, learning writing skills, etc. I especially loved the templates they had already in the softward for ELA and can't wait to get a job where I can use them! :)

Engrade.com!

Here is my pretend class that I created in Engrade - I loved using this extremely user-friendly grading/attendance program! Although I don't currently have a real class, I could see how much easier the grading process would be. I love the feature where you can weight the grades, that would be extrememly important to me, not to mention the feature where you could click on "drop the lowest grade?" As a first time teacher, this program had all the elements I could possibly envision, including attendance. I would have to keep using it for a longer period of time, in a real-life scenario to have any ideas or suggestions for improvement.

One of the best parts about it, though, is that students can access their own grades and keep track of how they're doing - often I hear students asking teachers to go over their grades so far, they've lost this or that project that had the original grade on it, etc. This feature, that students can log in for themselves, is extremely useful in this day and age where there's a big push to get students to take ownership over their education! Parents would love it as well, so that they could keep track of what grades their children are receiving all semester long. Both students and parents could make appropriate changes and suggestions as they keep better track of grades and attendance. Obviously what's lacking for parents is to see WHY their children received the grade they did, but then hopefully the student saved the actual hard copy of the project or test so that their parents could look at them if need be. My best guess - students would like having access to their account, but wouldn't like for their parents to have that same access!

Difference Between Delicious and Diigo

As a bookmarking site, Delicious is great for its simplicity - I find it to be incredibly easy to use and I use it ALL the time! Diigo has many more complex, yet wonderfully valuable tools that I will easily be able to use in order to not only share the websites I've found with students and colleagues (and anyone else who is interested) but also to highlight and make notes on important ideas for my own future writing and researching! As I have become overwhelmed by the amount of information that is out there, I truly appreciate a place such as Diigo to be able to organize, manage and manipulate all of that information I find rather than having it just be "something I once read that was interesting." It takes on another life by being able to digest it time and again and share it with others. Additionally, Delicious is actually just what I've been looking for, as I have been coyping and pasting websites into Microsoft Word and saving it on my USB key so that I could always bring those website with me to other computers I'd be working on. While I felt creative at the time, to figure out how to organize myself a bit, it now seems so incredibly archaic!

Portrait of a Digital Native

Reading the first paragraph of this article made me wonder about the effect of all the technology in terms of creating ADD! Sometimes when I’m in that mode of multitasking, I feel like this must be what people with ADD must feel like, completely overwhelmed by it all and often not knowing where to start. It definitely takes some getting used to, and I found myself initially averse to it.

However, the article makes some valid points that this mode of operating is what the younger generation has always known and been immersed in. I found the study that showed that a brain can be trained to “effectively self-organize competing information”, aka multitask, interesting - maybe that’s the piece I’m missing from my own comfort level with all this. This is excellent insight into today’s students – I will know better how to teach them and what to provide them with to engage them in learning. Society and the way we communicate has radically changed, shouldn’t the schools reflect that? If the students have changed so drastically, and I can see firsthand that they have, then our teaching has to change and grow along with that. Students don’t seem to be responding to traditional ways of teaching, so why not get on their level (that is simply different, not higher or lower) and try something new?

I can see such generational differences as Jane Healey writes about how students cannot possibly focus on anything in a deep, meaningful way, which of course, Fear disagrees with knowing that she is able to do so. This type of argument is just human nature. It’s the newest argument between the generations – there is something in every generation that cannot be imagined or understood by the generation before or after them.

Mantz' Mission is to Promote Technology

When I finally was able to see the actual start of Mantz' livestream (I had to watch it a few times to actually get to see it all because of the ads) I appreciated all the historical images, heading toward the 21st century were effectively juxtaposed with music that sounded like it was from a few hundred years ago!

This first video was hilarious, and I loved his idea of the "new" technology of books as compared to scrolls... I have seen the "Did You Know" video several times before, but it fascinates me every time - the visuals have always helped me put things into a great perspective and I imagine the same happens for students as well. I plan to actually use the "Did You Know" video at the beginning of the school year (when I get hired!) to bring students into the idea of how we're going to be using technology in our own classroom, with whatever tools are available to us as well as discuss the presence and importance of technology in our lives - in all its forms (and compared with other kinds of technology through the ages.)

One thing that I'm finding the more I watch these videos is that it's most helpful when there's a time frame on it so I know what kind of time I need to set aside to watch it. Given the limited time I have available, that would greatly help me set up my time accordingly. Not only was the beginning frustrating to get through with all the ads, but I couldn't find where the time was listed. Also, I couldn't find a tool to rewind and go back to review something he said that I didn't quite get the first time - all I could figure out to do was restart. All in all though, this was a very helpful video to watch in terms of how he sets up a 'classroom' on the Web.

The Intro to Cultural Anthropology video was a real eye opener, in terms of some of the statistical information being presented - and especially how today's youth needs to be great at multitasking. The thought of needing to be able to multitask to be able to get by and compete in today's world overwhelms me since I'm still figuring out how to multitask! However, students today have grown up in a world where that is the norm and they're so used to it that I wonder if anything else would seem boring to them!

The last video's discussion on students being enthralled, its definition and engaging students as opposed to trying to enthrall them also made me think a little differently about the responsibility of the teacher in the classroom.

Google for Educators and iGoogle setup

I loved iGoogle. I got lost in it for quite a while, exploring. This is extremely addictive! :) I especially loved going through all the ideas for the themes to have on the home page... some of these pictures are so stunning, I had trouble choosing! But then I saw how ridiculously easy it would be to change based on my current mood, so I picked one and continued exploring. The gadgets on the iGoogle page are tons of fun, and I will be excited for the day when someone figures out how to have the translator include American Sign Language - complete with video of someone signing the word(s)! That would be amazing... I feel like the more I use these things, the more creative ideas I get - like brainstorming.

In terms of the entirety of Google for Educators, I am floored by how expansive it is and love how collaborative and creative it can be - easily and quickly. My only concern is that some teachers wrote about having 24/7 access to and for students, which I don't actually agree with. Let me rephrase - I like that it's available to students 24/7, so everyone can do and access what they need to in their own time frame. However, we all need down time - I do not want access to students or anyone 24/7, that's an unrealistic expectation. I'm still a little "old school" that way!

That being said, I love that I will be able to post information for students and their families to access easily and clearly, and in a way that students seem to want to be reached! Initially, I wondered what the difference would be with how I had planned to use "technology" in my classroom - bringing in information on my flashdrive that I had found on the Web at home with a link to it saved in a Word document, as well as some PowerPoint I had created.... But there are certain differences, obviously, between that way of 'presenting' information and this newer way of 'sharing' information - and each can be used to support the other. I loved what a lot of the teachers wrote about their experiences and how much more involved and engaged the students were with learning, not just getting the work done to get the grade (which is how my generation and those before us were taught.) The focus really needs to be now on actual learning of the material and retaining that knowledge as well as the know-how to access the information if it's not immediately available. I was getting excited also coming up with ideas of how I'd use this in my English Language Arts classroom - for example with storytelling, making it interactive and having students get really creative by adding twists and turns to what they're reading as well as alternate endings. So often, students only get to read a couple of other students' writing if they're being paired up or grouped together to edit. This way, they will have easy access to what the rest of the class is working on, and/or working together on the same writing project.

Having explored Google for Educators, I can see how universal and easy it will be to utilize the applications and how students will love this and get inspired by it (not to mention that once I am up to their levels of proficiency, how impressed they will be with me!)

NETS for Students and Teachers

While reading the National Educational Technology Standards for students and teachers, there are several intriguing things that truly stand out for me. Technology can be used obviously in many valuable ways, but the most important to me is creating a widespread cultural understanding which will ultimately lead to tolerance and acceptance. Global awareness and engaging with learners of other cultures not only expands students' minds but also their hearts. As we are becoming more and more immersed in this global culture, I am reminded of when I was a child and my class was "pen pals" with another class across the country, and how exciting it was to learn about our commonalities and differences. Global learning certainly is several steps further along than that simple, yet important stage of development in reaching out to learners outside of our own community and an amazing way to allow technology to bring us all closer together, sharing knowledge and ideas. Many people from older generations fear that technology will create a divide, a disconnect between people as they seem to be only dealing with a screen in front of them. But the truth is that that screen now turns the world on to them in a way that wasn't possible when personal computers first came on the scene.

Additionally, these standards underscore part of my own personal philosophy, the importance of lifelong learning. There is always an opportunity to learn, at any stage of life, it's part of what keeps life exciting and worthwhile. In addition to connecting various cultures, to continue to use the knowledge that we have and build upon it, especially using new technologies, also connects the generations to each other. To impart this lifelong learning ideal (across cultures and generations) to students is probably one of the greatest lessons we can teach them.