what I took from class week 9

I learned that you can use google sites to have a survey for you class like we did for a mid semester review.  It seems like an easy way to see what your students think about how the class is going and have instant feedback.  I also learned that if a school doesn't have enough money there is plenty of money out there you just have to take the initiative to go get it.  We also looked at a synchronous tool called Elluminate which is a good way to facilitate learning outside the classroom.  I also learned today that we have to create a podcast that goes along with a contemporary issue that is related to technology and PK-12 leaners.  I also learned that there are a lot of things to keep up on and you should keep doing things a little at a time.

Rethinking education chapter 7

When things in the world change there is often good and bad consequences that go along with the change.  In this chapter they talk about what may be lost or what may be gained with this new revolution that is happening in education.  They first talk about what aspects could be lost by this change that is happening.  They talked about how you could lose being in touch with other students, parents taking control of their education, multiculturalism, and people buying up resources to give their children unfair opportunities for their children, just to name a few.  These are aspects that could happen if things go on the way they are because there are signs of this happening now.  Things that we could gain are students can learn what they want to, the web is very accessible and more attention to the students if the family is taking care of it.  These are just a few things that could happen if this revolution continues.  I feel that change is inevitable and we have to except that as future educators.  We have to embrace it and help the students get the gains more then the losses that could occur.  No matter what change happens there are negatives and positives in every situation.  What you need to do is try to have more of the gains then more of the losses and try to cancel out the losses by implementing things where you could minimize them.  As a future educator I am going to want to help the students use these new resources that can help them go farther and try not to lose things that could be valuable that came from the traditional way of education.  It is very important to stay positive and make the best out of change when it happens.

My thoughts on podcasts, video, screencasts, and live streaming

The technology discussed in this chapter really shows how easy it can be for teachers to post audio, video, and a mix of both on the web.  This technology allows you to give information to students over the web without being even close to your students.  This is a dun and easy way to assess your students learning of the material as well.  If you are teaching them something new you have them create a video or a podcast and assess them on their knowledge of it by listening or viewing it.  Many students learn in different ways.  As a teacher you can help students learn by using audio, video, and a mix of both.  This chapter made it seam very easy to use and add to the web what your or your students have created.  I took a geography class this summer and it was all online.  Our teacher used a lot of screencasts to help explain labs that we were supposed to do.  That is a very helpful resource because it is hard to understand what a teacher wants out of an assignment by just reading directions that can sometimes not make sense.  His screencasts allowed him to explain it to us like he was right there talking in person.  As a future teacher I could see myself using some of these different technologies because I think students can learn a lot easier if they see things visually.  I feel that it is a very helpful resource to get information to your students without you being by them.  They can also be used as great reminders before and after class to help students out.  If a student is sick or can't make it to school for a little while, this technology could be a great way to reach him and he would feel better because a teacher can explain homework expectations to a student better then a student that is bringing that homework home to him.  I am planning on teaching science and for labs screencasts, videos, or podcasts can be a great way to show students different things because labs are such a visual thing.  I feel that these technologies are very adaptable for education purposes and they seem pretty easy to use.

What I took from class 10/21

One thing that I took from class is as teachers we should try to think of different ways to facilitate discussion other then linguistically.  Some students are very good at talking and listening so a good verbal discussion is good for them.  Some students are better visually and maybe we should try to facilitate a discussion with something visually.  I learned that you can facilitate discussion with a jigsaw approach which is having an initial group which specialized in one thing and then they break up into other groups with one expert from each to share what they know with each other.  I also learned some good tools that could help me with the whiteboard like grouping, locking, and how you should make sure your colors contrast so everyone can see them.  I also learned that I can contact Dr. Boyer through skype because it can be faster then e-mail. 

Chapter 6: Rethinking Education

After reading this chapter I was able to understand how different aspects of education have changed throughout the three eras of education which are the apprenticeship era, the universal-schooling era, and the life-long learning era.  The reasons for education have changed throughout these eras because of the reason why people need to be educated and the new developments of technology that occurred in those three separate eras.  Technology affected these eras of learning immensely because the reasons why people were educated the way they were was because of the types of technology that were around during that time period.  During the apprenticeship era technology was very minimal and people had to create everything themselves by trades.  The people at this time were just educated for their trade.  They were taught what they needed to learn to succeed in life and that was pretty much it.  They had a little bit of reading and writing but it was mainly things that would help them make it though life and support a family.  Then during the industrial revolution there was large technology boom so trades were being relied on less and less.  Universal schooling was implemented because they wanted people to be educated so they could live in a democratic country.  The new technology allowed people to learn mass amounts of information and use it to do other jobs then just what they were apprenticed for.  Technology allowed for people to get more information because they didn’t have to just focus on being able to support a family because there were plenty of jobs.  Now the focus was just getting an education from a public school.  This allowed for students to be more social and reach out because they weren’t limited on learning little information from their master.  They were now able to learn lots of information from teachers and schools.  Technology was able to transform this trade type education to everyone getting educated because of the industrial revolution.  Now with the large advancement of technology all over the world it boosted us into the life-long learning because now people can learn anywhere and everywhere.  Computers allow us to constantly get information.  They also allow us to become more independent by not relying on just teachers and parents to learn.  Students can now learn new things on their own with search engines and videos at the tips of their fingers.  I think that this is a great thing to be able to constantly be learning and gaining information.  I think society as a whole can benefit from it by being more intelligent.  The problem with this is that people have to be motivated to learn.  They also need a good foundation to be able to read, write, and have comprehension skills so they can analyze what they are learning and adapt it to every day life.  It is very important for students to be engaged and like what they are learning because without that motivation nothing will stick and their will be no reason for learning new material.  As a future teacher I have to realize that there is so much information and technology out there that students can use to learn.  I want to direct them to this information and technology and give them the tools they can use to apply this for their future.  It is important to include and application of this education for a students future or they will not be motivated to learn.  I have to realize that I will be teaching in this new Life-long learning era and tell students to always want to continue learning and apply that learning to their future.

Chapter 7: blogs, Wikis, and podcasts

Flickr, I think, is a good example of an easy and fun technology that you can use in the classroom to get your students involved outside of the classroom.  This technology will help with teaching because you can post pictures and create slideshows of things that you did in the classroom.  I used Flickr in high school during football because a teammate’s parent posted pictures of the team on Flickr as a kind of way to look at the game and see you playing.  A teacher can use this to help in learning by putting picture on their Flickr account of things that they want the students to learn.  Maybe posting pictures or video on Flickr prior to class can give a little prelude to what you are going to be teaching your students that day.  This seems like a very simple and easy technology to use.  I think that it can engage the visual learners the best because the main think Flickr does is pictures and videos.

            As a future teacher I am going to want to help my students get interested by showing them pictures and help them get ideas of class visually.  It is also a great way to help students remember what they did in class.  If you could take pictures throughout class it would be a good way to remember what happened.  Also, if I am running a lab that has to grow or change during the week while the students are gone, I could take pictures and put them on my Flickr account so that students can stay involved and see their experiment develop.  This technology just shows that students like to learn visually because humans are visual learners.  I think this technology can help me with engaging students before and after the lesson in a quick and easy way.  In the future a good idea would be to have the students create their own slideshow like we did in class so they can get to know their other students and they can be fun to watch. 

What I took from class week 7

One thing I took from class today is that there are pros and cons to each side of these new seeds of technology.  It is also a good idea to show students the way to do something along with saying what to do so students can visualize it and understand.  We then started to learn some steps that will help us make an IRLO.  When we make our IRLO we want to design it for the students so it works for them and they understand it.  Dr. Boyer showed us many resources and and helpful hints on how to create an IRLO.  I learned that it will be frustrating at times but it can be an easy program to use.  It will be an interesting assignment but will be a good one.

Chapter 5: Rethinking Education

This chapter was a very interesting chapter in the fact it dealt mostly with education outside of the k-12 age group.  This means that education really never does stop and it is very important to realize that.  The chapter began with the discussion of families having there children home schooled.  Personally I have no problem with the idea of children being home schooled.  I believe that people can learn anywhere because this has been going on for many years.  As a future teacher I think it is important for public schools to strive and try to make the schools as appealing as they can be so that there is really not a need for home schooling.  I would want to try and give parents no reason to home school their child because they would be getting a great education at school.  I realize that you can’t please everyone and that is why home schooling can be a great alternative.  Especially because of the increases in technology that will make it easier for students to be home schooled.  I felt that the section on workplace learning was a very interesting section because I think it is a great idea for businesses to put money into educating their workers.  They used technology to provide scenarios and real life situations that will help their employees in the work force which is beneficial to the employee and the employer.  Technology helped this a lot because it is very easy for them to use and they can do it in a quick and easy manner.  Distance education is also a very beneficial way for people to learn things that they are interested in but can’t really learn because it is not offered where they are or they have disabilities and can’t go to where it is offered.  You are constantly seeing ads on TV for the University of Phoenix and how you can get a degree there.  It is a good degree for a specialized job that you want to get but I personally don’t agree that it matches up to a college degree.  I do agree that it is great for specializing in a certain thing that you want a job in though.  Reading the section on adult educating was cool because it showed that just because you are in the workforce or you are retired doesn’t mean that you want to just stop learning and being educated.  That is a great thing to think about because I feel you should always want to learn new thing.  Technology is really able to advance this because it helps with distance learning by being able to learn in you own home.  That is great that adult education is growing so fast.  Technology is also helping learning centers flourish because it connects people who want to learn the same material a lot easier.  These centers are great for students that want to focus on a certain subject or test like the ACT.  It is a great opportunity for individuals to get together and focus on a certain area that they want to learn.  I feel that this is a good addition to going to a school but it should not be the main place that you learn at.  If you think about it schools are learning centers just at a larger scale then the way they talked about it in the book.  Educational television videos, and computer based software have been going on for a very long time so I don’t feel that this is too much of a new area.  Recent technology may have enhanced it but video games and videos have been used for a long time to facilitate learning.  I think educational television and videos are a great way for students to learn and it is easy for teachers to incorporate them into their lesson plans.  Students can learn a lot from these and it is a great alternative to lecturing all the time, especially for visual learners. 

            Looking at all of these new systems of education I am quite impressed as a future teacher.  I feel that I can use these to my advantage by telling students about these things and having them try it out.  I feel that they can be great additions to what and how I am teaching them in my future classroom.  Teachers may feel that these systems are hurting education, which they could be if students only learn by doing this right now, but I feel that they can help students learn in different ways.  Many of these systems apply to students outside of the k-12 age scheme which I cannot apply to my future classroom.  What I can do is let students know about these opportunities and let them decide for themselves what they want to do.  With the system now students feel that they have to graduate high school, go to college, and then apply for jobs and hope to get one.  With these new systems they don’t have to do it by these steps.  The goal for educators is to get students to learn.  Students don’t always learn in the same ways and in the same format.  I think that it is our job to cater to the students and help them succeed for the future.  These systems can help if utilized right and are not the only source of education.  I still feel that the main source should be schools but with these new systems and new technologies it can help them in different ways.

My Thoughts on Chapter 6: The Social Network: Learning together

This  new technology just shows that the Internet and technology is becoming a very social environment and you can't do to much in isolation any more.  Twitter is a technology where you can follow certain peoples posts and read what others are thinking.  You can also post short "tweets" and then people can read them and follow you.  I don't really know how I would use this type of technology in the classroom because I really don't know of any schools that allow phones in school.  You can still use twitter online but I feel that it is more of just a social network for fun then a learning tool.  One way you could use it though is you can share some knowledge between you and the people that you are following.  A problem though is that you can only use 140 characters in a "tweet."  I think that it is a good tool for sharing bits and pieces of knowledge but it would take a lot of work and creativity to bring it to the classroom.  Another technology that was shared in this chapter were social bookmarking services.  These are sites like Diigo and Delicious.  These can be used by educators a lot easier and I think are a lot more useful for the classroom then  twitter.  These sites allow you to share other useful sites and information that you can use in your classroom.  I could use this because I could be teaching a lesson on photosynthesis and I could go on these sites and get other teachers Internet sites about photosynthesis so help me get information and ideas.  This can then help my students because they could go to my site and see those helpful Internet resources.  This network just allows for easy sharing of websites and resources to help facilitate learning.  I think the more you use them and build them up the more beneficial they will be for you in the future.

What I took from class week 6

Today In the peer lead discussion part of the class I learned that there could be alternatives to the typical way that students are being taught today.  One example would be that instead of just giving them a test to assess what they learned, you could assess them in alternative ways such as journals or interviews.  A good quote at the end of the discussion was we change everyday so why can't our schooling.  Dr. Boyer also brought up the idea of seat time.  The quality of seat time is far more important than the quantity of seat time.  This is a great point because a student could sit in a classroom all day and not learn a single thing because they don't like to learn that way.  Every student learns differently and just having them sit in a classroom doesn't necessarily mean that they are learning.  I also learned that there is a big push to bring the size of schools down a little and hopefully this will make the amount of students who graduate high school increase because there is a more social aspect to it.  After the discussion we went on and learned what and IRLO is and how we are going to encounter it as a future teacher.  Dr. Boyer then showed us some examples of what and IRLO is and I have definitely seen them before.  I also learned what the program scratch is and some start up on what I have to do to use this and make and IRLO.

Chapter 4 Reflection on Rethinking Education

This chapter of the book was about the development of American schooling and mostly the main stages of development came about through technology.  The development of the printing press was one of the first main technologies that helped in the spread of knowledge throughout people.  Since the printing press was able to create many pages in a short period of time they were able to create documents and spread them to people around the world.  The Reformation and American Revolution didn't have a lot of technology that laid the foundation for education like the printing press and the Industrial Revolution but, the goal was to get educate people for religious reasons, in the Reformation, and for political reasons, in the American Revolution.  Then came the Industrial Revolution where the technology of the world really laid down the foundation for education for the next couple of centuries.  This is when Universal schooling started to come about because they realized that all classes of people need to be educated.  It was pretty interesting to find out that a lot of the format that we have today such as, K-8-4 setup and the 50 or 55 minute class periods, has been around since the late 1800's.  It is amazing that this kind of a system was adopted and has been the same for such a long time.  Now that there is new technology being developed in the world many people think that this system needs to change because what students are learning is becoming irrelevant with the changing of the world around us.  The author tries to make that point because the system of education that we are in now was developed because the world around them at that time was changing due to the Industrial Revolution.  The enthusiasts therefore believe that education should change again because they believe that we are now in a knowledge revolution.  This may very well be but I don't think we need too drastic of changes that wipe the system we are in now clear.  I think there needs to be some changes but it will take time because of funding and people have to be persuaded to change, especially teachers.
As a new teacher I will have to be prepared to deal with the change of the education system and to adapt to change.  This is a very difficult thing to adapt to because my ideals of education have been traditional because that is the type of education that I received from K-12.  With the demand of technologies in the world today I will have to adapt to this change and help my students learn in whatever way is possible.  It will be very interesting if there is a drastic change in the system of education because I will be teaching right in the midst of change.  I don't expect it to be drastic because large systems like this take a long time to change and develop.  I just will have to be prepared if American schooling develops in a different way.

My Thoughts on RSS

After reading this chapter it sounds like RSS could be a very useful tool for yourself and there are many ways you could use it to help yourself as a teacher.  RSS seems like a great organizational tool for you to use online.  The internet has so much information and there is not way that you are able to visit all of the sites that you want to every day and look for useful information.  RSS seems like a website that can help me organize many different sites with lots of information into one neat and organized place.  As a future educator I am going to want to be as organized as I can and I think this is a site that could help me organize things that I find on the web a lot easier.  It seems like this tool can be utilized the best by incorporating it with blogging.  It would allow me to find useful information that other people have published on the web in certain areas that I want to read and learn about myself.  Having this tool would allow me to save time so I don’t have to be constantly searching different sites and sorting through information that is most likely not important.  With RSS the information can come to me and I can sort through things that I have pin pointed myself and that will save me a lot of time. 

            As a future educator I can show students this type of tool which then can help them constantly find resources that they could use to learn about subject areas that I am teaching.  Also if I am blogging about information that I am teaching in my classroom it can go to their RSS feed and they can read information that I have posted.  Another useful way I could use RSS is if I have the students blogging themselves I can have their blogs go into my RSS feed so I don’t have to visit each one of their sites individually.  All of that information can come to me and that will allow me to save a lot of time and energy to do other things to help them.  I think that I will have to start using it and get familiar with it to truly understand how it can help me as a teacher.  I think that it can be a very useful resource for me personally but, I think that I will have to learn more about it to fully understand how I can use it as a main tool in the future as an educator. 

My thoughts on Wikis

Chapter four was all about the use of Wikis and how a teacher can apply them to his or her classroom.  The chapter described how Wikipedia is one of the most used resources for kids to get information because it is usually one of the top ten sites that pops up when a person searches something in Google or another search site.  I like the idea of Wikis because it puts a lot of power into the person’s hands who wants to write about a particular topic.  That is also a bed side to Wikis because maybe a person would want to put falsified information on there for no reason which can easily happen and does.  Wikis can be another great tool that teachers can use and integrate into their classroom.  There are many versatile things that can be done with Wikis to facilitate learning and keep students interested and involved.  Students can gain much responsibility by posting their on information on Wikis for others to see.  Just to power to edit is a huge thing that can be given to students by the use of Wikis.  A teacher could have a constant discussion forum going with her students that could be easily accessible and easy to use.  Another good thing about Wikis is that they can be used for any subject because you can put pretty much anything on a Wiki like charts, pictures, and links.  These can all be placed on a Wiki for resources for students to use and help them to learn.

            As a future teacher I think that I will be able to use this tool effectively in my classroom.  One way that I could use it would be similar to the way we use it in class by having a student fill out what we did in class so all of the other students can look back and remember.  I would also like to use Wikis as a constant posting and feedback type tool.  I think that I would have the students post a response to a question that I would want the students to debate.  The students can then post their sides of the discussion on the Wiki and that way then can all view and edit their posts.  This would be a great interactive way to get the students to discuss maybe environmental issues or issues dealing with modern science.  I would definitely have to monitor the Wiki to make sure everything is educational and decent for discussion.  As a teacher I would also have to address the issue of using Wikis as sources of information.  Hopefully in this class I can get more insight on whether it is a good idea or not to allow students to use maybe Wikipedia for a source.  I think when it comes down to it the educator should monitor what is being used because sometimes it can be a good source.  The students will just have to cross-reference it with other sources.  This would most likely be the best way to go about that I believe.  I do believe Wikis can be used as a good technological tool in the classroom to get students involved and facilitate learning in a more creative way.  I will just have to be creative and come up with ways to integrate it into my teaching.