Observations of Edubloggers

I really loved checking out these Edubloggers that people have been talking about. I will admit, while the term "Edubloggers" is pretty self-explanatory, at the same I didn't really know what to expect from them. What I found from browsing through Kristin and Jeff's list of favorites, was an incredibly vast/endless amount of information that relates to the field of education. Honestly, it was amazing. It just seems like little by little my eyes are being opened to soooo many resources. I know that no matter how much I read, and study these resources, my first year of teaching is going to be somewhat terrifying. However it is awesome to know that there are so many places out there (in technology) that are there to help us and give us ideas!

The first Edublogger's that I absolutely loved was the book blog called "Bookends." It is the first one on Kristin's list of favorite! In this blog, two middle school librarians, Cindy and Lynn, discuss a books aimed for children and young adults. Every post talks about a different book, whether it is a picture book, a collection of ghost stories, or a novel. As an English teacher, this website was wonderful for me. I scrolled through a couple of pages of the critique's and loved it because I found the two librarians to be believable, right off the bat. I trusted their opinions, fairly early on in my blog exploring. I am not sure why exactly this is, the posts just had a very honest feel. In some cases, Cindy really loved the book, but then Lynn would point out what is good about it but also mention that it "read a little slow for her." Maybe this is what made it seem so honest. Also their reviews discussed the strengths and weaknesses of each book in terms of literary devices and methods. For example, the ladies would state things like "This is a good book, if you are looking for something with a lot of dialogue." As an English teacher picking a text for my students to read, I could turn to this website for some honest advice on which book I could choose. Maybe I am working on teaching them how to use dialogue in their writing, and so I could have them read (or offer for them to read in their free time) the one called Greyhound of a Girl which includes a lot of dialogue. While I am not sure how much leeway I will have in choosing my literature (I assume not a lot) I want to make sure I am picking the coolest, and best books out there for my class to read in hopes that it will help with the motivation of reading in my classroom.

Another Edublogger that I really enjoyed was a blog called "Digital Media & Learning" by Ewan McIntosh which I also found under Kristin's list of favorite blogs. This guy was pretty cool, right off the bat I loved that he really knew what he was talking about. And didn't elaborate extensively at the same time. The blog alternated between video posts, text, images, twitter surveys. All kinds of things. Obviously this appeals to me, because variety is always nice. I liked the different ways that he conveyed information and the fact that he always mixed it up. And the topics of his posts varied too which was awesome. Even from just scrolling the first page I read a post about school lunches/Jamie Oliver, one about Google, one about music and learning that talked about Will. I. Am. too. All kinds of interesting things. I liked this blog in a different way that I liked the book guide blog. It is more of something I would follow regularly and read here and there, just to keep up on stories out there that talk about education today and media and what is going on in the world. It is not as much of a reference tool like the first blog I talked about was, but still a great way to stay informed on the most recent stories involving media and education. Also, I am going to be following Ewan McIntosh on Twitter for sure.

Reflections on Class July 27th

As nervous as I originally was for my Evernote presentation, I really loved class today and all the interaction that today's class entailed. We've done a lot of experimenting with group teaching and projects so far this semester (more than in any other class I've ever taken!) But today's group work was really well needed for me. I really enjoyed the aspect of teaching eachother the website. It was a really effective way to teach this particular material as it allowed us to all sit in our small groups and show eachother, practice sharing files with eachother, while simultaneously interacting/discussing. A really great relaxing Friday class. I am not sure that I would have retained everything that I did if this class was setup in lecture format. I think if Kristin and Jeff had decided to teach us all of these websites in front of the class, I definitely would not have been able to focus, especially after a long week of classes. The small group interactive discussion and presentations was a good touch and overall amazing way to cover this material. I loved it.

We didn't have a whole lot to talk about with Skype although we got into some pretty good discussions about it. We found that we actually all had Skype already downloaded onto our computer. The discussion that we got into about Skype involved ways in which it could be incorporated into a classroom. Some argued that it wouldn't really be helpful at all, and with guest speakers it would allow students to tune out even more than if the guest speaker was there in person. I didn't agree with this opinion, although I could see how it could happen. I took a class last semester at U of M (Rust Belt Narratives with Jeremiah Chamberlin -- AMAZING), where our professor would Skype in the authors of the books we read so we could talk to them about their process writing their respective novel. It was absolutely awesome. Before then, I didn't think about Skype being used in the educational field, but the flexibility that it entails is amazingly convenient. Without Skype, there was no way our professor could have these professors come in to talk to us. It wasn't like he could just fly them in on a moment's notice. They could however sit in their office on a half hour break and log onto Skype to talk to us. Amazing. And I know for everyone who doesn't think this would be helpful in a secondary classroom would argue that the student's aren't as engaged because they aren't really there by choice. But disengaged student's are always going to be somewhat of an issue, in every classroom settings. Skype theoretically could maximize guest speakers in classrooms because it wouldn't be as much of a hassle to get them physically at the school, and distance isn't limited!

Oh boy, this is going to be a long post.

So Evernote, I wasn't as sold on. This was the website that I researched and learned about. There are some awesome features on it, actually there wasn't anything on it that I didn't think was awesome. It was more an issue of "OH my gosh there is so much to do on this website--I am now overwhelmed." I think I would need some time to really sit down with it and organize my stuff into it, and then I would really value it. I also think that at this phase of my life, I don't have an exact need for a website like Evernote, since I am always carting around my own computer with me. But I am so happy I got to learn about it because one day I bet I will be needing something handy to sort out all of my teaching/classroom stuff.

Dropbox was pretty impressive too. I really like this one. I honestly couldn't think of a reason why I wouldn't just save everything to Dropbox anyway. And I wish I would have known about this during my whole undergrad education here! I could probably name at least 15 times when I emailed myself the wrong document from the Fishbowl and lost papers and had to start all over ... very, very lame. And yes, there were tears involved in every one of those times. This website is honestly probably going to be instantly incorporated into my life.

Finally Diigo. Super cool! I was also a little overwhelmed by all of the amazingness, but I loved that we learned about this now, because I will be using this now for the rest of the school year for sure! A lot of the tools that it offers are tools I could really use right now. Especially the highlighting and bookmarking. And the groups were also fascinatingly convenient.

Overall, super impressed with this class. I loved the setup and the material that we learned. So helpful! I can honestly say that I am excited about my new life that involves several of these new websites.

Class 3 Reflection

Today we started off the day with a lesson on how to use Weebly. This Weebly lesson was my first experience with any kind of online portfolio, and I have to say, it was pretty fascinating. (Minus the fact that I was overwhelmed thinking about all of the work it is going to take to figure out what information to put on Weebly! I was literally flooded with so many ideas that it was overwhelming. I liked exploring with the website and playing with all of the different ways to portray information. We had a discussion about the usefulness of these kinds of sites, and while there were some mixed opinions, I think that sites like this could really be incredible for my future as a teacher. I mean with everything going electronic as it is, it only makes sense that resumes become electronic too!

The part of the class that I most enjoyed though, was the presentation from the former MAC student about angry birds in a math class. I just loved the sincerity and genuineness that the student expressed when talking about his first year teaching. It really helped put it in perspective what we are about to be doing, and some of the obstacles that are going to pop up in our first year. He said that he thought of the angry birds lesson during the week before the student's spring break, when he knew they were all drained and couldn't focus as well as they usually do. This made me start thinking too! Timing of certain lessons is really important. I started back thinking about my breaks in high school, and realized that it did help with learning when teachers would find a more creative/laid back way of presenting material when they knew we were thinking about vacation and not in full school mode. One of the points he expressed was the tradeoff that the real computing of functions wasn't happening, even though the students were clearly getting good practice at working with parabolic functions. In terms of standardized testing material, this doesn't really work, however, a teacher must consider the attention span of their students and find ways to promote learning in the most effective way possible given the circumstances.

Another topic I was fascinated by is Tweetdeck. I have had a twitter account for a year or two now, and honestly don't ever find myself tweeting. Recently though, I've had friends tell me cool things to follow to get running tips, or news updates, etc, and I've been really loving those sorts of things. Tweetdeck takes this whole interest/usefulness level of Twitter to a whole new level! The MAC speaker talked about all of the teaching tips, or lesson plan ideas that he gets from Twitter all the time and he has this information all functioning through Tweetdeck, so he can always see ideas when he is working on his computer. This is really awesome, and I would imagine would be especially helpful our first few years of teaching when we are really exploring what works and what doesn't. I presume, based on how he learned about Twitter, that maybe later this year this class will teach us more about Twitter and all of the amazing resources that it facilitates. I can't wait to learn more!

Games to Save the World?

Wow. So you gotta give this Jane lady some credit right? Getting up in front of all of those people and talking about her PhD in how video gaming can change the world. Honestly, I thought it was really impressive.

First of all, this lady is very well spoken. I thought she did a phenomenal job at articulating everything and making it very easy to follow. So that kept me engaged from the get-go (as if the subject matter wasn't enough). I thought she was great at speaking, and great at putting so many points out there. I thought she really did do a great job at making something that is totally irrational/crazy (like video gaming to save the world) into an idea that kind of, sort of sounds like it makes sense.

I don't know, though,

I guess, I was impressed with her, her presentation, her points. But overall, even though the games that she designed clearly related to real-life problems, I'm having a hard time grasping how playing those games is going to make the world better. What I am getting at is that if you play a game where the challenge is to survive without oil, then when our world actually runs out of oil, you will know that to do. That is somewhat valid. I just wonder if she is missing the component of all of the other people in the world. There is everyone in this world to consider here. Maybe that is one of the aspects of the game, which would add an interesting and logical perspective, but it still seems bizarre.  I mean, there is also the question in my head of: How is the world going to get that much better if people are literally sitting around all day playing video games? But then a side of me wants to say, well at least sitting around on your butt and thinking about it is at least better than sitting around on your butt and not thinking about it at all. I don't know, Jane has really got me thinking to be honest. I am really eager to hear what everyone else has to say about it in class, or through comments! :D

And now to shift to the reading, "Good Video Games and Good Learning." What I mostly got out of this related to Jane's speech in that, it is more beneficial to think of these issues, whether they are world problems, or boring facts that you learn in class as games. Ideally, there would be a way to make everything that is boring to learn a video game. I guess my only problem with that is I feel like it is still going to be boring. I know if I was presented with Mario Golf, and something like "Chemistry Gaming 101" I am most likely going to opt for the Mario Golf. For me, I'm taking the time to play a game and do something fun, so why would I pick something boring. Even if we turn every problem solving scenario in the world into a video game, there is still going to be the issue of people deciding not to play those games.

I can't help but think about my mentor student at Scarlett though when I am reading all of this. He is a huge gamer, and recently was telling me all about it and how all he ever wants to do is play video games. He actually even told me a few days ago that he wishes there was a game to practice his reading because he would play these kinds of learning games if they existed. These games could be a learning strategy--and a way for kids to study. If they can help students learning, why wouldn't we be in favor of them?

I wish I could clearly decide what my stance is on all of this. I think I am in favor of the ideas. I actually find them very fascinating, and even though I still find myself with these doubtful response questions to the ideas, I am by no means dismissing them. The fact is, our world is moving, technology is becoming more and more important, and so like Jane said, maybe it is time to use games to do real world work and put these powerful gamers to the test. 

 So I guess I've been slightly all over the place with my ideas so far, but after thinking it through, the bottom line is, it is important to consider video games when talking about the future. They are a clear example of how technology is increasing. And so just like we as teachers need to take advantage of pod-casting, and blogging, and the latest computers in our classroom, we need to take advantage of video games. It is time to open up to the world, and not dismiss it. If we are going to demand this change, and demand these improvements in teaching then we need to be open to helpful ways to help make that change happen.

Friday the 13th!

Unfortunately enough, I actually had to miss this class because of a little virus that I woke up with Friday morning at about 8 am. I will say, on every Friday the 13th that I have lived through, nothing too boldly unlucky has happened to me, but after this past one, I can say that isn't true. A fever of 100.9 that prevented me to going to the only double session of my technology class wasn't exactly what I thought that day had in store for me, but I was proven wrong. This is therefore my compilation of what I believed I missed out on, and also what my thoughts would have been had I been able to attend. Please feel free to correct me and/or comment on other important ideas that I missed as well! :)

It sounds like the first activity that I missed was a great discussion session with some media center workers/librarians. This sounded like it would have actually been very cool, and extremely helpful. I find myself intimidated by libraries on a daily basis, and now technology also, so I would imagine hearing some experts on both speak to us would have been really great.

I was also informed by my fellow colleagues that some group work was done in this beginning session also, and from the sounds of it, this was an intimidating task, at best, to many. I would have been included in that list of people who get the chills when they think about group work. It is so hard. And it's strange because my first thought would be that group work lessens the work for everyone else because we are splitting it up...but that only happens in a perfect world. I find myself generally pretty frustrated with group projects and such, if anything, they give you an extra place to be on top of your busy schedule because you have to meet up with your group. But what I have found so far from our SECMAC group work in class is that the discussions really are enriching, even though at first everyone might have 19 million different ideas to bring to the table. In my experience so far in this program, the small group discussions are what have made me really realize the true key points of some of these readings. It really is valuable for my experience to learn how to sit down and hear people's opinions, and put my own in as well (which usually requires lots of confidence and pushing myself). So, I can say again that I regret not being able to make it to this class for more experience listening and sharing with my colleagues.

Finally, I missed out on the podcasts. And I apparently also missed out on some great humor from Kristin during the demonstration on how to construct a podcast. However, thanks to the help of some REALLY patient fellow students in this program, I was able to upload my own. And that was pretty funny, I will have to admit.

How can teaching be related to the Soda Ban?

I'll be honest, the first thing that came to my mind when I thought about teaching ideas related to the soda ban was a debate. I am not sure if debates are generally parts of English classrooms, I never had any experiences with them in my English classes, but maybe in a speech class or a history class a debate on the article would be more relevant. With the Soda Ban article, an educator could really work with students on view points and argumentative work. One half of the students could "argue" in favor of the new law, and the other half would have to "argue" against it. Another idea would even be having students use the article as a prompt for an argumentative essay where they would have to take a stance on the topic, which leads me into specifically focusing on teaching ideas in an English classroom...

Even though I loved my English classes in high school, I always feel like I wanted more variety in the reading. I also know that a lot of students don't like English. Those students usually picture English with reading boring books from a super long time ago. While I love classic literature and value it in a lot of ways, I honestly think there is no reason why some of the reading in older high school classes shouldn't be current topics and articles. The Soda Ban article represents a great, fresh piece of text that could be used in a whole bunch of different ways. I don't remember there being a whole much of variety in any of my English classes in high school--one year it was Shakespeare, another year it was all war novels. And so I think in general, just adding materials like articles to an English classroom would really enhance the reading abilities of students, and at the same time inform them about what is currently going on in our world. They are also a great way to invoke class discussions. I wish I had more of all of that in high school.

One of the aspects that I love about English (well, my favorite aspect about English) is writing. My AP English teacher in high school put a huge emphasis on writing, and once I got to college my interest in it exponentially increased. I took creative writing classes, argumentative essay writing classes, advanced essay writing classes, creative non-fiction writing courses. This past semester as an undergrad, my final semester, I even took a class where we learned how to write radio scripts. Of course, there is some styles of writing that I don't find myself putting too much thought in, but as a whole, I really enjoy learning about all of the different branches of writing. I think that the soda ban article, and other articles would be great resources to bring to high school students (especially 12th graders) to expose them to different styles of writing. To expose them to journalism. This article could be read, analyzed, and broken apart to teach students about persuasive writing, about non-fiction pieces. Also, by using a current article to teach students about journalism and writing styles, they can also learn about what is going on in the world.

In Nurture Shock, which we are reading in our Ed 606 class, we just recently covered a chapter that talks about drilling and practice when getting material into a student's long term memory. While the authors emphasized the necessity of practice in learning, they also emphasized the importance of variety so that learning doesn't get boring. Even if an article like the Soda Ban article is used to "drill" students on grammar rules, or to practice reading in younger high schoolers perhaps, it represents a different way of practicing these skills. As an English teacher, I hope to vary the reading material as much as I can when I am working on automatizing skills with my students.

504: Class One Reflection

It is about twenty minutes after our first 504 class ended, and one word that describes how I feel right now is overwhelmed. I have never been a person who is especially interested or talented with dealing with any kind of technology. To be honest, I pretty much avoid any kind of technology, and I think the main reason I do this is because I don't want to bother myself with the hassle of learning it. I am disappointed in myself about this aspect of my personality, because I am only twenty-one. The technology that is now incorporated in schools is already very different and more advanced than when I was in high school, and will continue to change drastically these next couple of years. It is time for me to open up and learn all of these new additions to teaching, and just from my first two weeks of having all of my notes, assignments, and work online, I have to admit to being increasingly less intimidated by all of it.

In other words, I am thankful for the past two weeks of being forced to do everything on my computer because it prepared me a little more for the contents of this class. Even though I am familiar with things like Ctools from going to undergrad at U of M, I have always been one who prefers a planner and a notebook to learn with. I have learned that I can make the transition though, and there are lots of convenient and great ways that technology is an absolute gift to classrooms. I know that with the help of the Smart board that my mentor teacher has, she was able to take a task that I never thought could be made visual, and make it visible. She used it to connect a passage to the screen and then showed the students how to "Talk to the text" and make notes and connections all over the margins of the article.

I am 21 years old, and according to Shensky have lived in world with digital images all around me.

It is just amazing to me how over just one week of observing in the middle school and one week of classes, I have already noticed all of these changes and advances in technology in classroom. All I remember from high school is the overhead projector, and that was about as fancy as it got. After learning about all of these levels of cognition and methods of learning, I've began to see how truly valuable that technology is to young students who are learning.

Computer projectors were often useful in a college classroom, but I think that my perspective is a little different because I just came out of college. In many of my classes, my teacher still used a chalkboard as the only visual aid to his lecturing, and often times I found myself paying more interest in those kinds of classes. Granted, I am a college learner at that point and not a ninth grader, so my learning motivation was maybe higher than some high schoolers. I just think that a big risk with all of the technology at any age is distracting the students from the content. I’d be curious to hear other people’s opinion on this!

I wish that in class the conversation could have stayed away from the debate of whether Facebook is appropriate for kids and more along the topic of people’s experience with technology in the classroom. Just from my experience with LCD projectors in college versus chalkboards in some instances, I would have been way more curious to hear about other’s opinions on that. And even people’s opinions who are older than me. I would have loved to hear what they thought about their learning experiences several years ago without the technology compared to their learning experiences thus far in the MAC program, where electronic learning methods are all over the place. There are just so many debates about Facebook and the content, and the appropriateness, I really wish the conversation would have been veered towards the classroom and Shensky’s observations from his experiences. If you are reading this, let me know what you think J