Goodbye Everyone

I enjoyed being in this class with all of you wonderful people! I have met many lifelong friends and have kept some existing friendships! I hope everyone has a GREAT CHRISTMAS!

My Personal Learning Network

For My Personal Learning Network I contacted four people through email and one through Twitter and Tweetdeck. I first contacted Mrs. Sharon Barnette by using her email at sbarnette@bcbe.org . She had a lot of interesting techniques on how to incorporate technology into an elementary education classroom. She gave suggestions such as Promethean Planet . It has great ideas on how to use the Promethean board that is now in a lot of public schools. She also suggested United Streaming . It has culminating ideas that can be usede in Science and in Social Studies activities. Mrs. Barnette also says that a lot of her second grade students use the computer to take tests on in reading and also to practice their keyboarding skills.

Another educator that I contacted through e-mail and through Twitter was Ms. Jennifer Smith. She teaches fifth grade. You can contact her through her e-mail at jnsmith@bcbe.org or through Twitter using her name aujensmith. She suggested using a software called Kidspiration. It is a graphic organizer that allows the students to be creative and be able to put pictures on their otherwise boring looking graphic organizer.

My third educator that I contacted was Mrs. Erin Payne. She can be contacted at epayne@bcbe.org . She teaches fifth grade as well and has many ideas on incorporating technology in the classroom. She suggests using google to search for powerpoint that are posted by other educators around the world. She also says to use guided research inquiry. This is a more hands on approach in technology. It gives the students a set of websites and guided questions to find information about an assigned concept.

The last educator that I contacted was Ms. Danielle Watson. She can be contacted at dwatson@bcbe.org . She says that video clips are an easy way to incorporate technology into your classroom curriculum. It helps give the visual and auditory learners a more appealing form of instructional enhancement.
I have learneed a lot from all of these eduactors about how to incorporate technology into an elementary education classroom.

New Classroom Rules by Education Innovation

For this blog, I read two lists of things stupid and brilliant that teachers do with technology. I also looked at the New Classroom Rule by Education Innovation. Out of the three lists I picked out three of the data that I believe was the most important. The first piece of information comes form the list titled 7 stupid things that teachers do. The first one is that teachers do not have back up data. Doug Johnson says that doing it once, he feels sorry for the teacher. However, when the teacher allows it to happen twice then they are just plain stupid. It is very important to have copies of your data any many different ways. Such as saving it to a flash drive, on your computer, and then onto another computer, and even maybe on your email. I would even have a hard copy of my data just in case of an emergency. Th second piece of information also came from Doug Johnson's 7 stupid things teachers do. It is not supervising computer-using students. I believe this one is particularly important because students are a lot smarter than they come across to be. Students are capable of getting through Internet filters. Students and children use the computer and technology during most of their during their everyday lives, so they figure out little tweaks that they can make to a computer to get into what they want. The last piece of information that I looked at and thought was important came from the new classroom rues by education innovation. This was bring required materials to class, including your laptop and your cell phone. I think that it is absurd that students arenot allowed to bring their laptops to class because if they have it they will always have the Internet available to look up any multiple amount of information on a subject. Students also can do this from the cell phone if they needed to and having a cell phone is also a good safety precaution. To look at each one of these lists go to the following sites: 7 Stupid Things ,
7 Brilliant Things , New Classroom Rules

What I Learned in this class this Semester

This semester my EDM 310 class has been a very rewarding experience. I have learned many new things about technology and how to incorporate it into the elementary classroom. Before I began this class I did not believe that a teacher could incorporate technology into the classroom other than by using PowerPoint and allowing the students to play games on the computer.Now after going through an entire semester in my EDM 310 class and learning about all different types of technology, I now know that I was wrong and that technology can easily be put into an elementary education classroom. I learned that as a teacher you can have a class blog to help keep parents and students aware of what is going on in the classroom and it can also be used to keep in touch with teachers all around the world. Another kind of technology device that can be incorporated are cameras. Cameras can be used to take pictures outside for a Science experiment or for and Art assignment. The children can learn about cameras and learn how to use them effectively in life. Twitter is also a helpful source because it helps the teacher keep in touch with students and parents as well.This also allows for the use of a cellular device because one can check their email, twitter, or even a class blog from it.

There is one thing that seemed challenging to me while in EDM 310 and that is the spreadsheet assignments and learning how to use all of the formulas effectively and right during a document. This will be very useful to me in the classroom because I can keep up with supply costs, lunch money, or even field trip money by using spreadsheet and the formulas that come with it.I would not, however, change anything about this course because everything in the course is significant in becoming a teacher. I do believe that I am more technology literate than I was before I came into EDM 310. However, I do not believe I have made it all the way. There are a few obstacles regarding technology that I need to overcome and definitely plan on doing in the future. To improve my knowledge of technology I will continue to go to workshops that are technology based and teach you more about the different kinds of technology.

At The Teachers Desk

This week I looked at a professional blog called At The Teachers Desk. This blog was very interesting. It had many gadgets on the layout such as Worldwide Visitors, Contributors, Other blogs, a labels section and a couple more. It was a very easy page top go through and look at.

While on the professional blog, I looked at a few of the posts on it. One of the posts that I looked at was Using Technology for Effective Communication. This post gave many ways on the computer and on your phones that you can communicate with people all over the world. It is also important as a teacher to be able to know how to use these devices and communication sites because it makes it easy to communicate with parents. The site suggests using Twitter. The post says that Twitter is a quick communication device, but that parents do not access it enough to make it a worthwhile tool. It also mentions facebook and using your mobile phone to communicate with parents about your students progress or behavior in school. You can easily tell the parents what assignments the student missed while they were absent or any other thing.I also looked at some other post on the blog such as How do I know I am not just being selfish?

I believe it is important to have a professional blog because you can communicate with other teachers, post your thoughts, ideas, experience, and feelings onto the Internet for others to see. It is important to do so because you can easily help out future teachers or even teachers already in the workforce.

Michael Wesch

In this video, Michael Wesch talks about media versus culture. Media, he says, is not just a tool but that media mediates our conversations. When media changes, our conversations change. His buddy Marshall McLuhan said"We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us. Michael Wesch says that our conversations are mainly impacted by television. Our conversations come from television and create our culture. This is a great line that Michael Wesch said because I definitely believe it is true. We are always talking about things we see on television because what is on television impacts everything in our daily lives. He gives an example, when he shows a picture of his college classroom. The students seem uninterested and unexcited about his lecture and being in class. Then he shows a picture of the American Idol Casting Call and everyone in the photo seems excited and cheerful. What is the difference he says? The word "Whatever." Michael Wesch followed the history of the word "Whatever" and the meaning it has come to have today in our "MTV" World. The meaning it has today is that we believe we are the most important person in the world.

He believes that we have completely forgotten how to have a real relationship with another person. We are so wrapped up in ourselves, we just do not know how to do it anymore. He says that youtube is something that helps this problem. On youtube, you can connect and interact with people all over the world and create relationships with them. It does not matter if you are shy or outgoing it is just easier. I really enjoyed listening to Micheal Wesch and his lecture. To listen to it click here: Michael Wesch

Why we should publish our work on the internet

I believe that we should post our work on our blogs or in other ways of the internet because we never know who wilol see our work. It could eb our future boss or even our future or past students. We never know whose life we will touch or change by exposing our work. Jus tlike the children in the video "Landslide". The children posted their work on the internet and the video and osng was heard by Stevie Nick's manager. She said she cried each time she heard them sing the song and she even asked them to perform it in Madison Square Garden for Sleetwood Mac show. From reading the comments about the post, other peoples lives were touched by their work as well. MAny of the commentors said they cried when they watched the video. Another reason we should post is because when we post information about useful websites, some teacher around the world or student could need help and could find their information from our blog post.
One example that we have done and discussed in class is Dear Kaia. This little girl exposed her work and posted it onto the internet and she touched the lives of many people all across the world. People see nature differently because of her pictures. Antoher example is when a person is trying to get a job. Their future boss can go unto their blog or a myspace network and learn about that person. It can help people to understand your personality and what kind of person you really are. I think that this is a very important thing.

I think it is real important that we publish our work onto the internet because we never know which individual we can help around the world ort even next door. If you would like to watch the "Landslide" video go to: "Landslide"

ACCESS

ACCESS



All of the information I am writing on i found on the following website: ACCESS .
ACCESS or Alabama Connecting Classrooms, Educators, and Students Statewide is a distance learning tool. Their goal is to "provide equal access to high quality instruction to improve student achievement through distance learning. The website provides online courses and even has AP classes which are Advanced Placement course that are college board approved, remediation module for Alabama High School Graduation Exams. This website was launched on November 1, 2004 and is available to all public high school students.

The website has many resources to choose from. These resources are Alabama's Virtual Library, ChemLab, Curriculum Pathways, ALEX, Elluminate, Graphmatica, APT Plus/ Discovery Streaming, MathType, Nettrekker, and SREB. tHE alabam Virtual Library is an online library and information resource that is available to all students, teachers, and citizens. The ChemLab provides simulation software for education including chemistry courses. Curriculum Pathways provides innovative web based resources in core disciplines for grades 8-14. Elluminate is live multimedia collaboration on the internet. Graphmatica allows teachers and students to print off or copy different types of graphs from the Internet. APT Plus/ Discovery Streaming has free exciting multimedia educational material. MATH type allows you to create mathematical notation for word processing, web pages, desktop publishing, and presentations. Nettrekker delivers digital content and is organized by grade and reading level. SREB is Southern Regional Educational Board.

This website is very useful when it comes to student, parents, and teachers because is gives a variety of resources to look at and choose from when trying to do projects, homework, or research papers. You can accumulate a lot of information from this website about one or more subject areas.

ALEX

ALEX



All of the information I received about ALEX or Alabama's Learning Exchange I went to the following website: ALEX . Alex is a project of Alabama's Department of Education that is designed to index and share many types of educational materials and information through a time-saving, one-step resource for educators , parent, and students. A majority of the resources, such as lesson plans, web links, and interactive activities, are all located and connected to the Alabama Courses of Study by National board certified teachers.

While on the web site, you are able to download, print, adapt, and use lesson plans from the websites database and use them in your own personal classroom or even share them with other educators. Also on the website, it is easy to connect to the Alabama Department of Education, Alabama's Virtual Library, and Alabama's Public Television. When entering the website, there are may different categories you can choose from to fins information or lessons plans in education. The categories you are able to choose from on the website are Courses of Study, Lesson Plans, Search, and Web Links.

If you click on the topic Courses of Study, you are then given many other different options. You are then able to click on the subject area in which you are trying to find information or lesson plans for and you can also choose the grade level in which you are searching for. If you click on the lesson plans topic you can search by grade level and by subject. In the search topic you can also have your lesson plans categorized by grade level or keywords. The topic I found most useful was the web links topic. This topic allows you to find web link that are educational for the subject you are searching for. It has links for teachers, administrators, and students. You are also able to recommend websites to add to the list.

This website is very useful for teachers, parents, and students. As an upcoming teacher it will help by making it easy for me to find lesson plans for my students that are interesting and fun for each subject area. As a parent it will help me when I am trying to help my child with his homework because I can find information on projects or even research papers. This is also helpful as a student to help me with homework, projects, research papers, etc.