Will this be my last blog? Nah!  This blogging thing is not nearly as alien as I thought it was prior to this class. I can see how blogging will be beneficial as a teacher. I wish some of my past teachers would have used class blogs to keep students up to date on classroom happenings.

Anyway, on to Week 8.

Security is a really important issue in education and in our personal lives. In our personal lives these days we trust our computers to store so much of our important information. We keep financial information, house hold bills, budgets, family photos, home videos, music, and so much more on our computers. It is scary to think that one mouse click could take it all away. Use to it took a house fire of natural disaster to cause such a loss. Given the amount of technology that we use in our classrooms these days security is definitely an important issue. When I was in elementary school the closest thing that we had to a computer lab was a small, hastily constructed room with one computer in the corner of the seventh grade classroom. We could access the room if we behaved well enough to earn the privilege. We were allowed to spend 15 minutes at a time playing Lemonade Stand or some other game. Not much learning took place that I can recall. Now, my son’s is in first grade and already has access to and uses a more advanced computer lab than I used in during my first trip to college. Student information, grades, lessons, and other important educational documents our now stored in electronic format. Without the appropriate level of security all of this information is at risk of being lost or misused.

I am not teaching yet so I do not use a school computer lab at this time. I do use a computer daily in my current vocation as a social service worker and security is a constant concern. I have access to several state systems that contain sensitive information. It is important that I am able to navigate these systems without the fear of someone’s sensitive personal information falling into the hands of unauthorized individuals. Our network managed by the Kentucky Office of Technology who are on constant guard against malicious software and viruses. The only issue that we seem to have to deal with regular is phishing attempts. Some of which are very hard to distinguish from legitimate emails. Usually our tech team warns us before it becomes an issue but occasionally some one will fall victim to the phishing attempts before the tech team becomes aware.

Week 7

This is your brain your brain…

This is your brain after reading about the brain for 3 hours…

The human brain is an amazing organ and I really do enjoy learning about it. However, I kind of felt like I overloaded this week with all of the brain info that I consumed. There was a ton of really interesting articles on the Dana Foundation website and I spent an un-proportionately large amount of my available study time this week browsing the website, reading, and watching webcasts. I particularly liked the webcast featuring Martha Denckla, M.D., Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Jerome Kagan, Ph.D., Emeritus professor, Harvard University discussion childhood brain disorders. There was a lot of interesting topics raised during the discussion. Perhaps one of the most interesting subjects was about pharmaceutical treatments vs. other non-pharmaceutical treatments for ADHD.

After a week free of technology explorations it felt good to be back online learning about useful tech resources that I will be able to use in my classroom. I was aware of delicious.com and can see it being useful as I integrate more and more technology into my classroom. I was not aware of historypin.com. I thought it was a neat concept and would make for some interesting classroom assignments. However, when I explored the map on the website I soon realized that there was no photos posted from the area in which I live. I guess if I decided to use it in my classroom I would be a pioneer of sorts. As for the rest of the tech explorations,  they were as informative as ever. I will definitely use the talking calculators and the piclits.com site in my classroom. The writing for math wiki was interesting and I like the concept of using a wiki to increase learning and awareness of writing in mathematics.

The assignment for choosing a web 2.0 tool or educational software was a difficult one for me. I am not teaching yet but have discovered several technology resources during this semester that I plan on using in my classroom. One that came to mind was the virtual manipulatives website that we explored during one of our tech explorations this year. I plan on teaching elementary special education when I  begin my teaching career and manipulatives are very helpful when working with students with learning disabilities. This website will definitely be part of my teaching tool box when I start teaching.    

Week Six

Another week has passed in Educational Technology and I once again find myself struggling to string words together to describe all that I have learned from this week’s lessons.  

It feels strange to not have a dozen or so tech explorations to discuss. Oddly, I kind of missed doing them this week…but not too bad. The tech explorations have been some of the most informative assignments that I have ever had and the resources that I have gained from them will be a great benefit when I begin my teaching career.

This week’s assignments focused on exploring the world of webquests and creating our own webquest. I found this week’s assignments to be challenging and the creation of the webquest was very time consuming. Dr. Goldberg’s warning to not wait to complete the assignment was more than appropriate. I found myself struggling with time constraints this week while trying to juggle Easter activities, my work, my son’s spring break activities, and class work. Somehow I manage to get through it without melting down.

Time was not the only challenged I encountered while trying to complete the webquest assignments. There were a few other areas that proved difficult during this week’s assignments. One area that was probably the most frustrating was computer issues. It seemed like it took me about as much time this week to get my computer to work properly as it did to actually complete the work. The Questgarden.com site did not seem to want me to register for the free trial which turned into a 2 day process before I was successfully registered. The submit button did not work for me which must have been an ongoing issue based on the note on top of the registration page with instruction on how to address the issue. Only one problem…the instructions did not fix the issue. For some reason it appeared as if I had registered and was logged in, but for some reason I was not able to navigate the website without entering a login and password. When I entered the login info I continually received a prompt indicating that there was no matching account. Yet, on the “member dashboard” page it showed me as being already logged in. Eventually I gave up and worked on another class. Then, when I logged back in the next day I had to register for the 30 day trial again. This time it was successful.

The Webquest discussion offered another challenge for me as I found it difficult to find webquests that were created for use in the elementary/middle school special education setting. I plan on teaching in this area and it appeared that there were little or no webquests geared specifically toward this particular audience.

At the end of the week I feel that I have gained some valuable resources and knowledge from the webquest assignments that I will apply in my classroom…soon hopefully!

I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but this week’s assignments were very informative.  Broken record! That is a cliché that should be obsolete. It could be replaced with “scratched compact disc”. No wait…what am I saying music is all digital now. Anyway…back to this week’s assignment. This week was all about online communication tools. 

There are many types of online communication tools. Some that seem commonplace to me and some that I was pretty much unaware of. 

Email is such a part of my everyday life that I could not imagine life without it. It seems like a large portion of my day is spent reading and sending emails. I don’t remember snail mail taking up some much of my life. It seems like I used to go to the mailbox, grab the mail, sort it, throw a large portion in the trash unopened, and then keep the bills. With email it seems like a constant receiving and sending of relevant and irrelevant messages even after all the spam has been filtered out.  

Chat is another communication tool with which I am fairly familiar. I personally do not like chat rooms because it seems like they were created for people with ADD. I mean I like my conversations to be focused and orderly which is seemingly difficult to accomplish within a chat room. My experiences with chat seem to all go about the same. It starts out simple enough with a question or comment posted, then a few quick relevant responses, then a few irrelevant responses, then a couple of “come view my photos” posts, then a few more relevant and irrelevant posts, then an “earn $5000 a month from home” post, and finally everyone is either mad, confused, or off viewing someone’s photos. I guess the chat is a good communication tool when you have the appropriate safeguards in place and a moderator that keeps things focused.

Blogs and Wikis have been covered well in earlier assignments and have became part of my vocabulary. I like blogging for an effective means of expressing opinions and posting information. I will definitely have a class blog when I start teaching.  Wikis will also be part of my teaching tools as well. I like the idea of having students contribute to Wikis as an ongoing class project.

The online communication tool that I had not really considered as a communication tool was virtual worlds. After this weeks reading and assignments I now understand how this can be used. I have watched my son on Club Penguin and would not let him chat while he was on there out of fear that some weirdo was on the other end. But I can see that if used appropriately it would be a fun way to communicate. 

Again, not to sound like a “scratched CD”, but this week’s tech explorations were probably the most informative piece of the assignment. I was really impressed with the various “tubes”. Studenttube, teachertube, and youtube education will all be a part of my teaching toolbox.  As will the math dictionary for kids. Spicynodes.com will be really useful in creating a class website and prezi.com will help me spice up my presentations if I can use it without causing motion sickness as the site warned. 

Edmodo.com was probably the tech exploration that I learned the most from. I was not aware that this kind of resource was out there. With all of the craze over social networking it only seems logical that I should create a social network for my class. It seems like everyone is already used to communicating in this context so it would be natural and unforced. I think that setting up an online community for my classroom will be a great way to keep students and parents apprised on important classroom events. 

This week has been yet another interesting and informative experience.