Chapter 9: Social Networks

I have never thought of having Facebook as a part of my classroom, but after reading this chapter, I think it would be very cool. I have had a Facebook account for a couple of years now, and I love it. I love being able to keep in touch with my friends from High School as well as relatives I don't get to see that often. I know its capabilities for personal reasons, but using it in the classroom is something I would have to work on. Like the book said, integrating Facebook in the classroom not only can teach academics, but it can also teach students how to be a part of the society. They can learn how to work with others as well as communicate their ideas and have conversations with others. I think Facebook could be a great way to get my class to be connected even more. I also like the idea of creating a class Facebook page. It could be a general way that my students could keep in touch, whether it be about a homework problem, or to see if they want to go to a movie together! It would also be a good way for parents to keep up on what is going on in class. I could post pictures on things that we are doing in class as well as class news. This way it can be one big community of parents, students, and I to all keep on the same page. I also just learned about Ning. This also has many of the capabilities of Facebook, and it may be easier to work with administration to get this idea approved. This is an actual website that the teacher can set up. The book gave very detailed directions how to set it up, and I think that I could figure it out! It is much like Facebook in the way that I could be able to have one place to keep all of the students and parents informed. It could really be a great communication device. I think as a future teacher I would really love to set up some kind of site like this. I think there would be so  many benefits of having a network that it would make the classroom environment so much closer on all aspects.

Today's Class

Today we started class by discussing that we should be adding pages to our delicious more often, and to keep up with it. At week 8 we should be around 40 pages. The group that led the discussion did a really good job! Some things that they need to work on are to anticipate group sizes and to give clear expectations. I think that some of us were very confused with the expectations for our group discussion. They did a great job using real life scenarios and to use the Smartboard to its potential. I thought Jim did a good job bringing the class back to the discussion topic when there was starting to be a very heated classroom. we also discussed how teachers shouldn't be afraid to ask and go and find things for your classroom that you need. You have to take initiative in getting the best things for your students. We then went over the Ellumionate, and the cool things that can be done with it. It is a great tool for web conferencing and other things like that! This is a very cool tool! We then started talking about the steps for doing podcasting. More of the technology is going to be discussed in Monday's lecture. We need to be sure to find a contemporary issue that relates to PK-12 learners. We need to then write a script that maps out what we are going to talk about. We need to have an overview of the issue, a summary of the resources, and our reaction to the issue. If I need a microphone, he has some! I have to admit i am feeling really overwhelemed!!!!

Chapter 7: What May Be Lost and What May Be Gained

This chapter discusses how that this change in education change is not only affecting the lives of students, but of the society as well. It also goes into depth on the losses and gains of this educational revolution. I am going to discuss some of the gains and the losses as well how this is going to affect my future as an educator. One of things that may be lost is the hope that we can create a society where we have similar values, and where cultures are widely accepted. There is a concern that the divide between cultures will grow, and that society will break apart. Another one of the main losses is that the access to learning, and how this gap is going to increase. People who are not wealthy and able to purchase these new technologies will most likely be left behind. Students of wealthy parents are more likely to get their children more private lessons to get their child ahead in school. There is also a fear that the liberal arts program is going to become more focused on the individual. When students focus on only what they are interested in, they miss out on the general knowledge that is so important in being a informed person. I personally thing it is very important to make sure that students get a broad range of knowledge through schooling while they can still focus on things that they enjoy. One last concern is that people will become socially isolated from just sitting in front of the computer, and not getting to social interaction that is so important.
One of the gains that I found to be very interesting is that knowledge will become more engaging, as students can focus more on things that they enjoy to learn about. When something interests a student, they will be more likely to put more work into their schooling and really put their time into it. I think this is a good idea, as long as generalized aspects are added to it. Technology is also capable of customizing education to the needs of everyone. They can be in any environment and work at the level that is necessary to their success. Also their is hope that the academic competitiveness between students will decrease because they will most likely succeed better at things that they want to learn about! Learning is also becoming more of a family together, which can bring families closer!
I can see both sides of the issue, and think that some of  both will be important in my future as an educator. I think that it is very important to give my students academic choice with their assignments. I also think that is is very important to teach general, lifelong ideas that can help all of my students despite what profession they are going into. I also want to stress the importance of understanding each other culturally and personally. I think all of these ideas need to be kept in mind when I am teaching my future students!

Chapter 9: Podcasting, Video and Screencasting, and Live Streaming

This was such an interesting chapter to read! There are so many great ideas that I can use in my future classroom! The only complaint I have about this book is how they go over things step by step so if you aren't sitting right next to a computer doing it as they go through it, you get kind of lost. Also by the time I would need to know how to use it in my classroom I won't have the book anymore! At least I have some great ideas that I can use and research on my own time! I think that opening students up to things like pod casting to help them with their communication. They could use a podcast to keep up with current events or present something to their classmates. It seems like this would be easy to set up for the students, and it would also make them plan things out and take responsibility in their work so it turns out the right way. This would also be cool so parents could see some of the things that their children are doing in class. Students could also subscribe to a podcast so they can keep up with information that interests them. I am also excited to do a screen cast for this class because it sounds very cool. I like that we are able to do things in class so we are prepared to go use them out in classrooms. Like I said before, I think that these types of projects for students not only teach them about cool uses of technology, but how to have responsibility for learning how to use these tools, and how to make their work look fabulous! Things like pod casting, video and screen casting, and live streaming are where our school will be going in the future years. As a teacher, I know that I need to keep my students updated and fluent in being able to use these technologies that will be a huge part of their lives. This book always stresses the fact that teachers need to test out the technology first so they are able to troubleshoot with student problems and so they know what to expect. I plan on taking this advice to heart, and making sure that I stay caught up with all of these technologies!

Today's Class

Today we started class with the Chapter 6 discussion. The gruop that went did a great job with thier presentation. They really did a good job of being well prepared, and had a good command of the material. One thing that I would consider to have in some of my otehr presentations would be to have a time watch going so the students know how much time they have to finish whatever they are doing. Another thing to consider is ways to have groups share information in other ways than verbally. This will apply to all types of learners then. We can also try a organization technique called jigsawing. One group  becomes an expert on one topic, then the groups are all mixed up so there is an expert in the group from wach ofteh topics. I also think it would be cool to use summary frames so groups know how they are supposed to report the information they are discussing. We then discussed things that would help us with our interactive whiteboard lessons. One thing that I know I need to do is lock the objects that I don't want to be moved. I also need to use infinite cloner instead of copying and pasting a bunch of different objects. Color choice is also very important. We also should keep in mind that there should never be too many words on a slide, no matter what the age of students. We then talked about the SWOT ananlysis for our Cool Tool Screencast. As always this was a very informative class period! :)

Chapter 6:The Three Eras of Education

I thought this chapter was very interesting because it compared the three eras that education has gone through so far: apprenticeship, universal-schooling, and now to life-long learning era. As we moved through these areas many things changed including responsibility of education, expectations with school, the content taught, the pedagogy of schooling, how students are assessed, the location where schooling takes place, how it affects culture, and lastly how it affects relationships. In the apprenticeship era, children learned what their parents knew and what they did for a living. During the universal schooling era, students were taught a uniform content, and went to school to get their education. During the life-long learning era, students are beginning to be able to chose what they want to learn and where they want to learn it. It is crazy to think how far education has come, and what changes will take place in the years to come. I couldn't even imagine being born in a different era, because I love to learn, especially when I am learning about something that interests me. I would have never gone to college to pursue a career in education, which is my passion in life. I think that knowing how education has changed will help me in teaching my students. I want to give them choice with things they want to study. Some teachers I had would make students do reports on things that didn't interest them. I think it is really important for students to have academic choice. I also think that it is important for teachers to help their students thinking about that they want to do in their future. There are so many choices, and the possibilities are endless with what they can do when they graduate high school. I think that anyone can continue their education in this life-long learning era, which is so cool looking at where education has come from. As a teacher I will also have to be prepared for more changes in education, and I am ready to take on that challenge!

Chapter 5 Presentation

I facilitated the discussion on Chapter 5 with Amber and Cari on Thursday. I first read the chapter very carefully before we met as a group so I was prepared to contribute valuable information. We then met together to make our Prezi, and another time to go over the presentation. We knew that we wanted to do something different, so we grouped the class based on a color that they recieved. I thought this went pretty well. I also think that my group worked really well together and that helps make a successful project. I think I put in a good amount of effort into this project, and I think it turned out pretty well. There are always things to work on for next time though! For me, I think it is 10 times worse presenting in front of my peers rather that talking in front of kids. I feel so much more relaxed with young students! I think it really helps me come more confident in public speaking every time I talk in front of my peers. It is a terrifying thing to do, but I will have to get used to it. It also makes me more conscious of the language and presenting skills that I use. My peers are a much tougher crowd than kids, for the most part! I think that it is valuable to facilitate a discussion in front of others at my level. It makes me take responsibility for really knowing the information, and being able to relay that information to my peers. I also think this is just preparing me for a future full of giving presentations to others, for it is a big part of my career, and something I am going to have to get used to! I think this also effects my future as a teacher in the fact that what I am going to be doing as a living is to teach content to others. It helps to have practice with this as much as possible. I think that this was a great project, and I am pleased with how it turned out. I think that every time I present something, it gives me more confidence, which is something I need! I hope to get better with each presentation that I give!

Chapter 7: Fun With Flickr

Flickr was something that I had never heard of prior to reading this chapter. After reading about this, I think that there are some very cool ways to incorporate Flickr into the classroom. One of the first things that I found to be super fun for my class to do would be to randomly find a picture on Flickr and write a story about it. I think this would be a great way to get their creative juices flowing. I also think that it would be very cool to have students comment on someones photo that lives in a different country or something to learn more about the picture they are viewing. Students can also comment on each other's photos and create a discussion. This can help with student communication, which is always a good idea to work on. As a teacher I would love to have a classroom Flickr space. This could be used for class pictures, projects, field trips, guest speakers, and students doing good deeds. I think this would be a great way to keep not only the students connected, but also their parents as well. This is just another way that parents can keep in touch with what their child is doing on a daily basis in school. I also like the fact that there are security settings on Flickr, which can limit the people that can view the pictures. Especially if I am using this with my students, I don't want some inappropriate person looking at my class. I also think it is very important to go over safety with my students when they are using this site. Like the chapter discussed, these pictures get filtered but some inappropriate ones can get through. If students see something they know they shouldn't be looking at, I hope they would know to simply exit out of it. This is will always be a problem with the Internet, and I think teaching kids about online safety, there is so much to offer to them. I really enjoy reading this book because I am discovering so many fun ways to incorporate technology into my classroom! I really think Flickr can really add something special and interesting for the students in the classroom!

Today's Class

Today was my turn to present Chapter 5. I thought that the presentation went generally well, but there were definitely things that could have been improved on. One of the comments on how we could have changed things were to have our colored groups have a certain place to go so it wasn't so confusing for the members of the class. Also, we could have given the class more time to have a discussion about each of the topics, so one of the groups wasn't the only one talking about the topic. We could have also shared deeper commentary with the comments that the class shared with us. We could have also commented more on the quotation that we had in our Prezi. We should have told the class why we chose that quote, and why it was so important. We then discussed making iRLO using scratch. The first step is to identify standards-based content, the to design a developmentally-appropriate way to address the content, and next to actually construct the iRLO in Scratch. This looks pretty tricky, so I will see how this goes! I thought today was a very informative class period!

Chapter 5: The Seeds of a New System of Education

I am presenting on this chapter this week! I thought it was one of the more interesting chapters I have read so far. It is really interesting to see all of the different ways that people chose to get their education. One of the parts that really surprised me was the section on home schooling. I never realized how much social interaction home schooled students get with students their own age. Parents usually get their children involved in many activities so that they aren't socially unaware. Parents also realize when their children aren't catching on to the information, so they will get help for their child in any way they can. Students who are home schooled are also better on most standardized tests. They get more one on one attention than a lot of public school students. One of the negative aspects of home schooling is that these children will not learn common values and concepts that kids in public schools will learn. It can also lead to a lack of cultural understanding because home schooled students are less likely to meet others' of different cultures and races. Another aspect of this chapter that I thought was so cool was the section on adult education. I think that these older adults who want to continue their education is really aspiring. Why stop their education because of age. I hope that I am one of these people that never wants to stop learning! The whole focus of this chapter is that life long learning is what our society is moving toward. I love the fact that people are never to old or too educated to keep learning more, and enhancing their understanding in many aspects of their lives!

Chapter 6: The Social Web

This chapter had a lot of good ideas that I could implement in my future classroom. The number of people who use the web is incredible, so it only makes sense for this large group of people to share information and learn from each other. I have always heard about Twitter, but I never really completely understood what it was. Twitter is are short little updates(140 characters or less) that other people can follow. I always heard about the start twittering different things such as what they are doing at that moment. From what I understand, people can be a follower of whoever they want to get feed updates from. I think this would be a really cool way to keep my students connected. Whether it be homework questions or about things we did in class that day I think it would be cool to have them communicate through a twitter.This chapter also discussed Social Bookmarking. We have already started a Delicious account in class, but the other website, Diigo, has some other interesting aspects to it as well. One of the coolest parts is that Diigo can be annotated by important sections on pages you are interested in. It can also be used collaboratively. I think that Delicious is really cool too now that I have started to use it more. I think it will be really helpful later in my career when I am looking for lesson plans, or new ways to present information for my students. The sources that we have received in class I can forsee to be really helpful down the road. I think this website could be very benificial to use in the classroom with my students as well. I think that if we are doing a research paper, this would be a great way for them to keep all of their sources organized and together. I think all of the tools discussed in this chapter will be useful in my future classroom, despite the age of my students.

Today's Class

Today the discussion group discussed the Chapter 4, and the 4 main developments of the American School System. The first of the developments was the printing press and how this changed the orally speaking culture to a printed culture. Next came the reformation and how it brought in schools. The American Revolution brought new freedoms and liberties to the population. Then came the Industrail Revolution, and with that came the idea that children should go to school to be educated. It is interesting to think about where schooling has come. Some things that presenters need to remember where that they encourage deeper thinking, need to speak up, stop using uhms/likes, consider how to group peers, how they used the SMARTBoard in their lesson, and be knowledgeable with redirecting students when they go down the wrong path with their ideas. We then discussed the iRLO project. The project needs to be interactive, and have user control with feedback on their progress. It also needs to reusable, that it can be used over and over again. This creation will be an object in Scratch. The resources that we got to use will be helpful for how to use Scrach because it looks very confusing to me right now! This looks like a really fun project once i understand how it is used!

Chapter 4 of Rethinking Education

This chapter was about the development of American Schooling, and how schooling went from apprenticeship to universal. Apprenticeship was when parents or other family members taught the children skills they needed to succed in the family business. For example, in the 19th century most people were farmers. The children learn from the older people in the family how do things such as plowing the land. The book says that these children learn from observation, imitation and guided practice. A man named Horace Mann then led a movement that took schooling from families teaching the students to the state being responsible for the schooling. There were many factors that contributed to the shift of schooling that include the printing press, Reformation, the American Revolution, and the Industrail Revolution. The Industrial Revolution changed the role of children. According to Fredrick Carlton, there were only three things that children during the Industrial Revolution 1. work in factories 2. get into trouble on the streets and 3. learning in schools. When the Child Labor Laws came into play, the choice was obvious that children needed to get into schools. The shift went from family to state education. Another part of this chapter that I found to be interesting was how the school system has evolved. Each thing in the school system that has become so routine to us these days really took a lot of thought and time. These things include cumpulsory attendance, graded schools, tests, textbooks, and comprehensive high schools. Things like diversity in chools are making the demands of schools change. Teachers have to work with children who don't speak English, and have to accomodate to students with differnet needs. The chapter ended saying that the schooling system has undergone so many durastic changes in the past, but it is being resistent to the changes that technolgy of today has to add. There will most likely be another change soon to how we know schooling. I think this affects my future as a teacher just in the fact that I have to be ready to embrace change. Things in my future profession will always be moving forward, and I ahve to be ready to learn new things and be able to pass on the information to my students. I thought this was an interesting chapter to see where schooling has come over the years!

Chapter 5: RSS

This chapter discussed somthing that I have never even heard of before, RSS. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. A RSS makes it easy for readers to be constantly updates wth new information on a particular website or issue they are interested in. The example they used in the book that helped me understand this idea more was a political science teacher has 20 or 30 Weblog and media sites on the internet that they are really interested in and continually check on them. With an RSS, when these sites are updated, an aggregator will collect the new imformation to the websites that you subscribe to. This way you don't have to go searching for these updates all of the time. The easiest aggregator to sign up for according to the book is google reader. The book gives step by step directions on how to set up an aggregator, which I think is really useful. When you have an aggregator set up, you can then subscribe to RSS for weblogs or media that you use a lot. A teacher can use RSS feeds in the classroom by having all of the students' blogs be in them. This way the teacher doesn't have to go through each students blog to see if they updated any new posts. I think this is a great time saver. Teachers can also have their students create their own google reader accounts for things such as current events or new reasearch on a topic that the studnets are working on. I think that if I have older middle school students in my classroom, this will be beneficial to use. However I don't see how this would benefit younger elementary age students. If I do teach the younger age students I as the teacher will still use it to keep up to date on new ways to teach my students. There were many other tools that RSS can assist people with such as combining RSS feeds. You do this by going to RSSmix.com to reduce some of the work it would take to do this on your own. This chapter was very interesting, and I think this is a great resource that will save a lot of time!

Chapter 4: Wikis

This was such a great chapter because it gave me so many ideas on how to use a wiki in the classroom. First the chapter started with the author using a very powerful example of what a great tool a wiki can be. The example of the 2004 Tsunami that killed more than 175,000 people. 48 hours after the first wikipedia post, there more over 1,200 edits and more than 6,500 words. I think this is just amazing that anyone can add their findings on a website to keep others informed. These are wods of many people contributing to the website to give others the more up to date an hopefully accurate information. Seeing as how anyone can update and add information to a wiki, there are a lot of challenges with using wikis in the classroom. It is hard to know what sources to trust on a wiki, so the book suggested telling their students to use wikipedia as a starting point for research, but not as a sole resource. There may also be a chance that students come across inappropriate things on a wiki, but the cool thing that teachers can do is wikis that require a login and password system, which can make it easier to use in a classroom. One of the most common ways to use a wiki in the classroom is to create an online text that both the students and the teacher can contribute to. Students can add posts that contribute to a specific topic that would benefit the whole class. The book also discussed some very cool examples of wikis that are being used in schools. One of these examples I found to be so cool was the one where a teacher connected with a teacher in Bangladesh, and their classrooms got together to do a two week investigation. This site they created contains usful informaion such as essays, audio and video files that focus on their topic. What an amazing experience for these students! Other teachers make their classrooms' wikis to be viewed by anyone, but can only be edited by  their classroom. This is how I would most likely use a wiki in my classroom just to be safe! There are just so many possibilities in using a wiki in the classroom it is amazing. I most definately want to use a wiki in my future classroom. I think that it can teach students some very useful ideas on the internet as well as how to share their information with others. I enjoyed how the book explained how to start up a wiki so it makes it easier for teachers to start one on their own. Students work and contributions can also be monitored, which is a great tool. I never knew their were so many possibilities with wikis until I read this chapter, and now I am excited to use one in my future classroom!