All good classes must come to an end!

Today was the last day of my first class on my journey through the Instructional Technology program. The entire week was filled with great people and tons of great new technologies. Our final project included incorporating all the different technologies we have learned throughout the week. These technologies included Glogster, Google sites, Google doc, Jing, iMovie, Skype, Garage Band, and so much more. My team used lots of these technologies to create a lesson for second graders about community jobs. We focused on having the students make a Glogster. If you haven't heard or used Glogster it is definitely worth checking out!! I had never used Glogster until we started our final project, but it is definitely something I will be using in my classroom next year. For our small unit on community jobs we had the students use different types of medias to learn more about the different kinds of jobs in a community using an RWLD. Then the students picked the job they wanted to have when they got older. With the job they chose they would create a Glogster with 4 different facts, 2 pictures, and an optional video. If you would like to see the lesson in more detail please check out the website we used! Even if you can't use our community lesson I would recommend you find a different way to use a Glogster in your classroom.

Resources for using Glogster:

Here is a video on how to use Glogster Edu- http://i41.tinypic.com/2drv3ao.jpg
Here is an article about using Glogster in education: Glogster Launches Education Development Program
Here are some written directions on how to use Glogster- http://www.ehow.com/how_5941261_create-poster-glogster.html

Mac = Frustrating

I was never a Macintosh user growing up. When I got my first teaching job I had to learn how to use a Mac because that was the only type of computer in the entire school. It was frustrating to learn how to operate a new computer system. When I moved to a new school I was back in my comfort zone, a Mac free zone that is! I know some people love their Mac's, and they do have some good qualities, but they aren't for me. Today we had to create a video using iMovies and the process was exhausting and I found myself frustrated with a Mac all over again. Not only were were working with a new program, but also a system we weren't familiar with. Fortunately I remembered a few things from using the Mac last year. It's crazy how two pieces of technology that do essentially the same thing can be so different. Look at this site to see which is best for you. It comes down to your needs and which type of computer meets that need. For those of us in this class that aren't Mac users, well we will just have to get tough and suck it up! Here are a list of sites to help us get through iMovie.

This site gives you a basic visual of how to get started with iMovie:
http://www.cmu.edu/computing/doc/contributed/imovie/index.html

At this site you will find a more detailed description of how to use iMovie, add pictures/videos, and edit your work:
http://mvtv.org/imovie.pdf

Here is a video you can watch on how to get started with iMovie 9:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjrS9iX_txU

Picture courtesy of http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4058/4528239534_c3b20f96ef.jpg

Top Secret!!!

I love taking field trips in school and our field trip was very cool today! We had the chance to go out to the Cedar Falls Industrial Park and take a look around a very top secret place. What makes this place so top secret you ask????? It is full of servers from several companies whether that company is important or not. Some of the servers were main servers for a compnay and some were just back-ups for a company. Another cool part about where the servers are kept is that if there as a fire that fire could be put out in a matter of seconds by a chemical that sucks out the air. As we toured the building it was amazing to see how many fans they need, the number of generators ready to start if there is a problem, and the amount of electricity they use to keep everything running. I believe our tour guide told us that they use 30% of Cedar Falls electricity! This would be a great building to think about using solar energy. What a great day!

Picture from http://mpalternativeenergy.com/images/windmills.jpg

Oooopppsss

http://i33.tinypic.com/qqrceo.jpg
I learned today that I am supposed to be blogging after each class this week. Sorry faithful readers that I forgot to blog yesterday! Yesterday was very interesting as we looked at Second Life. At first I thought Second Life was pretty cool. I created my character and set forth going from island to island. As we kept exploring Second Life I got a little bored. I'm not a big video game person and Second Life reminds me of a video game. It was also a bit frustrating that I couldn't change my second life character the way I wanted to and the islands weren't loading up very quickly. I would say the coolest part about Second Life was when I went to Hallucination Island where I got to experience what it was like to be a schizophrenic. The "voices" in my head never stopped and you can truly appreciate all that a schizophrenic has to deal with. We also learned that this is not a program to be used with kids under 18. As a teacher of 2nd graders I was a little annoyed that we spent 4 hours playing with it! However, Sara from our class had some amazing alternatives for Second Life that we can use with younger kids. Check out the other alternatives on her blog at Sara's Sighs.

Rockin' Robin Tweedle-lee-dee-dee-dee, tweedle-lee-dee-dee

Today was my first day on campus for one of my classes and it was awesome. I thought I knew how to use a lot of different tools but today's activities took me to a whole new level. We looked at Twitter/TweetDeck, Diigo, Jing, and, iGoogle, and Google Docs. I'm not sure if I'm sold on the whole idea of tweeting yet, but it has proven to be useful today in class. We downloaded TweetDeck which allowed us to organize and group our tweets. Through TweetDeck I've been able to see all my classmates comments during and after class. For a project we are working on creating surveys for the class to fill out and sending them through Twitter. I think the coolest TweetDeck experience of the day was when we skyped with Vicki Davis author of the blog Cool Cat Teacher. While we were talking to her we were able to tweet questions/comments to her for her to respond to. This teacher does amazing things with her students and having the chance to speak with her and ask her questions was incredible and I encourage you to check out her blog up above. So how will I be using Twitter you ask? I think it will be used for educational purposes only on a needs basis. I follow Superman (Tom Welling) and even he doesn't use it 24/7...too busy saving the world I guess.

Will computers ever replace teachers???

http://tiger.towson.edu/~sharre2/images/technologygraphic.jpg

My brother always tries to tell me that someday there will be a time where a lot of teachers won't be needed because computers will take over. I personally think there will always be a need for teachers, but then again I don't want to lose my job:) Awhile back when I was at home visiting my parents I read an interesting article in the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier about a new performance based diploma academy for students that are "digital" learners. This academy is literally taking away the teacher and replacing him/her with a computer program that teaches them the concepts digitally and allows them to work at their own pace. Of course there is one teacher supervising the group of kids but it makes you wonder, can computers replace teachers? The program targets those that are failing or on the verge of dropping out of school as another alternative for getting the education needed. While this concept is a great idea I feel that those who study hard in school to get good grades and are also digital learners are being left out of this opportunity. Both Waterloo high schools have had a huge success rate with this program, but the only downfall is that students aren't getting the writing and science lab requirements needed through the program.

All the possibilites......

As I read Web 2.0 for my class I can't help but think of new ideas to try in my classroom next year. Being a forgetful person I've recorded them all throughout the book:) I don't know about you but I love to read about new ideas/techniques to try in my classroom. At the previous school I taught at I was very fortunate to be able to attend multiple conferences and loved it!!! Each conference I attended gave me something to try in my classroom. One of the problems I run into during my reading block is finding the time to get to all of the small groups the way I want to. Sometimes I might only have time to see a group once during the week. As I read the section about Wiki's and have been using them myself for the first time I thought why not use this for my small groups??? I could pose the questions I would like them to answer on the Wiki and while I'm working with a different group that group can be taking their turn answering the questions. We would be working on comprehension, grammar, and the quality of their sentences. I could just print off their answers and we could have a quick discussion about their answers. One of my classmates had another great idea using blogs to encourage reading over the summer. On Schaa Spills Ink's blog she talked about how one of her colleagues wanted to find a fun way to get students to continue reading over the summer so that their isn't such a gap when they start school again. She decided to set up a blog for students to talk about what they are reading during the summer. They tried it in school and the kids loved it, what a great idea!

Technology Administrators??

To experience the full potential of blogging we have several tasks in our class. The first task is obviously maintaining our own blog. Then we are to follow our classmates blogs as well as some other blogs relevant to what we are studying. As I was reading through a few of these blogs there was an interesting post about whether or not we need Technology Administrators. Feel free to read the post as it is very interesting. Being new to a fairly large school district my first thought was "we have a technology administrator?" I have no clue who that would be! We have tech support but I don't feel all those working for tech support fall under the title technology administrator. Part of being a technology administrator is overseeing instructional computer systems. If our district has one I feel as though they are letting teachers down a little bit. So the question is do we need them or not? I feel if a district knows their technology administrator and he/she is working towards improving the district with evident results then yes why not keep them. However, if a district has no idea who their their technology administrator is then I bet they aren't doing the job they should be doing then why keep them? My mission tomorrow at school is to figure out who our technology administrator is and if we even have one, I encourage you to do the same. Then think about whether your school could do with or without them.

Home schooling?

I had a mother at the school I used to teach at decide when to pull her children out to home school them. She usually pulled them if she didn't like the teacher. I support those that would like to home school their kids if they do it correctly. When I got her kids they were a grade level behind in reading and slightly below grade level in everything else. I spend the next year with one and two years with the other catching them up just to have them pulled again. I discovered that this mom had a blog and decided to check it out. It is one that I frequently visit to see how she educates them. Technology didn't even exist. I asked the kids how often they use the computer at home and their response was maybe once a week! They were writing letters during "writing" time and I was thinking why don't you throw in e-mail every once-in-a-while?

So how much technology does a student that gets home schooled use? In a previous post I made the comment "Where are the parents?" One of my followers made a good point in stating that maybe the parents don't know how to use technology either. What if that parent is one that educates their kids at home??? I think a home school situation is an awesome situation to be utilizing technology. I recently watched a video on YouTube "Learning to Change-Changing to Learn" that addressed standards and No Child Left Behind. Standards and NCLB are all that teachers focus on, but at home that's not the case. Some schools hold a Back To School Night to inform parents about the upcoming year. A situation like this would be a great way to get parents involved with a new form of technology as well. One idea I have for next year is to put a Wiki page on my classroom website to help parents and get them networking as well! Another idea would be to hold a class focusing on some type of application that anyone in the public could attend, I know my parents would have appreciated a class!

Computers and Internet

My first discussion topic for one of my questions was to write about myself and how I use technology. I made the comment that when I'm teaching social studies it's hard for me to say a computer is a want and not a need. In my life I feel as though it's a need, not just for the internet but for the Microsoft Word components as well. I type much faster than I write and for someone who doesn't draw very well I can make a nice clean circle! Is it a need though?? The definition of a need for second graders is something you need to live/survive. Another definition from Longman Online Dictionary is "to have to have something or someone, because you cannot do something without them, or because you cannot continue or cannot exist without them". Can we exist without computers???? One could argue that they did so many years ago and we can do it again. Can you imagine life without computers??? I can't! Think about how much slower everything would take. Right now it takes me two minutes to check my bank account online and make sure it's balance (that's if I haven't made any mistakes:)) Before online backing it would take me a lot longer because first of all I had to wait every month to get the statement. We can also think about the number of trees computers save us from chopping down. Who needs to write a letter to someone when you can e-mail them!

My professor asked a really good question in response to my discussion topic, is the internet a right or a privilege? My response was: I think if you are the one paying for the internet service it is a right, but if you aren't paying for the service then it's a privilege. I think some people go into libraries and abuse their right to be on the internet by acting inappropriately with kids around. I also think someone could argue their 1st amendment rights and say that the internet is a right for them. I think this question is a great discussion question and I'm sure lots of people have their own opinion on the topic.

Articles you may want to read about this issue:

http://www.progress.org/cfaccess.htm

http://tinyurl.com/26mjdqs

Photo Courtesy of http://newsinhealth.nih.gov/images/Human-Behavior.gif

What a world!

As I am reading the book Disrupting Class for Instructional Technology a lot of ideas flood my brain for my classroom for next year. I was hired right before school started and coming into a new district I had to learn an all new curriculum as well as a new report card that went along with the student learning expectations. While I was trying to catch up and learn everything technology was not a priority, unfortunately. I didn't have my website up all year and my kids had 60 minutes total of computer time each week if we were lucky! 30 minutes of that time was taking our weekly reading assessment and the other 30 minutes was working on type to learn. Next year my hope is to step it up in the technology department as much as I can for 2nd graders.

It is mentioned in the book several times "that people in the United States have spent billions of dollars putting computers into U.S. Schools, it has resulted in little change in how students learn." As an elementary teacher I would like to address this statement. The first point I would like to make is in order for teachers to focus more on technology the standards have to also focus more on technology. Right now a second grader has only one expectation on their report card under technology which is knowing how to shut down a computer. As a teacher when you look at just one expectation under technology and 15 or more under reading and math, what does the system think we are going to spend more time on???? With the Iowa Core Curriculum I believe that will change and maybe we will have a chance to do more than just shut down a computer. I know that is not an excuse not to incorporate more technology across curriculum but there are other factors that stop us. I have a small room that barely fits the 26 desks I have for each student. We only have room for one computer in our classroom and it sit in an open closet. The students rotate turns during work time after their work is done. But with 26 kids and not being able to get on until they are finished with their work doesn't give them much time to use it throughout the year. Of course with people spending "billions of dollars on computer" I bet your thinking why don't you use the computer lab??? I would if I could get the time in there. With 13 classes all needing the computer lab its a fight to see who signs up first. 2nd graders also need more time then the older kids because they are still trying to manage a computer.

I would also like to take the time and ask where are the parents???? Why is everything solely on the shoulders of a teacher??? Yes it's my job to educate them in the best possible way for them to learn and I do just that. I also think that it's the parents job to continue helping their child grow at home. Maybe the parent should allow their child more time on the computer to explore all it has to offer as well.

Adobe Connect

My first post for my class is talking about my experience with Adobe Connect. Our class signed in with cameras and all to discuss the latest reading. When I think about 13 or so of us all being able to see and talk to each other it's pretty amazing. I didn't even know you could chat face to face with that many people so considering the situation it worked better than I had expected. Of course there were a few issues like delayed responses, talk buttons not working, and lots of people with ideas to express. I know there was a time when some could hear me but others couldn't and that may have been my fault as well. With a laptop I'm not sure how well my voice gets picked up by the microphone. I think with more practice we will get better and at least work out the little kinks.

My New Blog

A blog is one of many things I will be trying out as a I pursue my master's degree in Instructional Technology. I've read many blogs before but haven't actually started one up myself because I use Facebook. Another requirement for this particular class that I am in now is to also sign up for Twitter. Twitter was the one thing that I had never wanted to be a part of. I don't know why anyone would want to know what someone is doing 24/7. I always thought that those who tweeted just didn't have anything better to do. Well I guess now I am one of those individuals..we'll see how it goes. The direction for my blog is unclear at the moment, but I do know that I will be posting information and reflections about my current classes. You may be on a two year journey with me through grad school for sure!