I have enjoyed the self-training part, with the help of the people from Common Craft and their paper-people explanations, of course. As a teacher, I appreciate the way they explain and teach technology concepts that may be a bit hard to fully grasp if you're not immersed in current technology. A highlight has been reading everyone's blog and watching the digital stories. Impressive.
Besides Common Craft, which I will definitely revisit when I need to understand technology stuff better, I will continue to explore TeacherFirst Edge: Safe Web 2.0 in the Classroom . I like the way they present their information by highlighting the name of a program or site followed by the words 'reviewed here,' where you can read other teachers' opinions and experiences with that particualr program or site. They link blogs and videos, etc. Love the site!
I am excited to have discovered GoogleDocs (our team used it for planning today!), and Jing, a very practical tool that I know will come in handy later. Another program I absolutely enjoyed playing with is PhotoStory. I felt successful with it (very important so I dare try further...) and I can't wait to use it and teach it in the classroom.
When I started with Tool #1, I tried not to think of the 10 others...and I admit that by Tool #8, I totally felt on tech-overload. But perseverance pays off...now I have several questions that are fueling my interest to go further, and I see this blog as sort of my 'notebook.' Here, I have a record of my learning, a place to refer back to if I forget how to use a particular tech-tool, links to tutorials, samples of the technology I was able to use (yes!), and a support system made up of teachers who navigated through the same tasks and can help each other. It was not easy for me to complete the tasks, but absolutely wouldn't have it any other way!
Monday, August 16, 2010
Tool #11
There is no question that as teachers, we have wide access to multiple tools to create a rich technological environment in the classroom, and absolutely no question that this generation of kids is wired to keep up with the ever changing technology. It is the nature of technology that makes it essential that our students learn to make the choices that will help them operate safely in the technological world. It isn't enough to be tech savvy, but it is also important to be safety savvy.
Digital citizenship refers to the digital community, and communities have norms that define membership. After reading several sites about what it means to be a responsible digital citizen, several themes stand out in my mind regarding responsibility to self and to others: access and trusworthy resources, copyright law/infringement, etiquette, personal privacy/identity, and security.
So, along those lines, it's important that together with technology skills, we teach our students safety skills. They need to temper the excitement with caution. They need to: understand that the internet is not a private place, be selective of who can be an 'online friend,' not give away personal information or passwords, report cyberbullying, be selective of which resources to trust and why, obtain permission before using someone else's work and protect their own work by using appropriate measures. So, understanding and applying safety is one more tool we need to deliberately teach.
I love the BrainPop page on digital citizenship issues: http://www.brainpop.com/technology/digitalcitizenship/
Digital citizenship refers to the digital community, and communities have norms that define membership. After reading several sites about what it means to be a responsible digital citizen, several themes stand out in my mind regarding responsibility to self and to others: access and trusworthy resources, copyright law/infringement, etiquette, personal privacy/identity, and security.
So, along those lines, it's important that together with technology skills, we teach our students safety skills. They need to temper the excitement with caution. They need to: understand that the internet is not a private place, be selective of who can be an 'online friend,' not give away personal information or passwords, report cyberbullying, be selective of which resources to trust and why, obtain permission before using someone else's work and protect their own work by using appropriate measures. So, understanding and applying safety is one more tool we need to deliberately teach.
I love the BrainPop page on digital citizenship issues: http://www.brainpop.com/technology/digitalcitizenship/
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Tool #10
I browsed through the iPod and iPhone education related apps and there were many that would benefit the students: Dictionary.com, Tangrampuzzle pro, Google Earth, Planet, Sove24, BrainPop, etc. With such a wide number of choices, as a teacher, I need to familiarize myself with as many apps as possible and choose what would be educationally beneficial to my students. Access, user-friendlyness and convenience are not the deciding criteria, but relevance to instruction and learning like any other tool, whether it be iPods, iTouches, manipulatives, the computer, active board, workstations, etc. I look forward to exploring these apps in the classroom and getting ideas and feedback from my grade level on tried and true apps that will add to the classroom. Here, I think, a balanced diet is the key.
Tool #9
I downloaded Jing and went through this short tutorial: http://www.screencast.com/t/M2RhNDE2
to learn how to use the basic capture feature. The Jing Help Center tutorials show you how to capture and image and how to capture a video with a 5 minute time-limit.
I tried Jing out and recorded myself trying to retrace the steps I used on PhotoStory to create my California Christmas story for Tool #7. Then I saved the movie on Screencast, retrieved the file number and posted it here...hope it worked.
http://www.screencast.com/users/GenaOlson/folders/Default/media/883a1e00-e80d-42da-8a8e-301b77df7a43
I have not used Skype yet, but we will in the near future to keep in touch with friends who are moving away. I can see the benefit of using Skype to connect to other learning communities in other districts in Houston and across the state or the country to share results on studies about common topics. This would benefit all students.
to learn how to use the basic capture feature. The Jing Help Center tutorials show you how to capture and image and how to capture a video with a 5 minute time-limit.
I tried Jing out and recorded myself trying to retrace the steps I used on PhotoStory to create my California Christmas story for Tool #7. Then I saved the movie on Screencast, retrieved the file number and posted it here...hope it worked.
http://www.screencast.com/users/GenaOlson/folders/Default/media/883a1e00-e80d-42da-8a8e-301b77df7a43
I have not used Skype yet, but we will in the near future to keep in touch with friends who are moving away. I can see the benefit of using Skype to connect to other learning communities in other districts in Houston and across the state or the country to share results on studies about common topics. This would benefit all students.
Tool #8
I tried inserting the video of 'What do we do' but Explorer kept giving me an error message and wouldn't upload it, so I linked it and also, just in case, I added it as an HTML gadget.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AvZ5ulVyLc&feature=player_embedded I thought, 21st Century Skills: What do we do?, from the Wikispaces site, was very thought provoking. It challenges teachers with the reality of the educational gap evident in high school graduates, and it shows the results of a survey of 431 employers indicating that high school graduates are underprepared for the workforce, and deficient in the areas of: critical thinking, problem solving, written communication, professionalism and work ethic. It raises the question: How are we preparing our future graduates for a world where they have to be 'masters WITH content,' not 'masters OF content,' and it proposes changes high school curriculum. Very, very interesting.
My absolute favorite site is http://www.commoncraft.com/about/who. Several of their tutorial videos appear on our 11 Tools Blog to teach various tech concepts and applications (the guys with the paper drawings). Have you seen their main webpage? It says, 'our product is EXPLANATION.' They are brillirant! From a teacher's perspective, the way they 'teach' is just what we need in order to understand the fast-pased, non-stop evolving technology engine. Simple and clear explanations. Love those guys!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AvZ5ulVyLc&feature=player_embedded I thought, 21st Century Skills: What do we do?, from the Wikispaces site, was very thought provoking. It challenges teachers with the reality of the educational gap evident in high school graduates, and it shows the results of a survey of 431 employers indicating that high school graduates are underprepared for the workforce, and deficient in the areas of: critical thinking, problem solving, written communication, professionalism and work ethic. It raises the question: How are we preparing our future graduates for a world where they have to be 'masters WITH content,' not 'masters OF content,' and it proposes changes high school curriculum. Very, very interesting.
My absolute favorite site is http://www.commoncraft.com/about/who. Several of their tutorial videos appear on our 11 Tools Blog to teach various tech concepts and applications (the guys with the paper drawings). Have you seen their main webpage? It says, 'our product is EXPLANATION.' They are brillirant! From a teacher's perspective, the way they 'teach' is just what we need in order to understand the fast-pased, non-stop evolving technology engine. Simple and clear explanations. Love those guys!
Tool #7
My favorite yet...this was fun. I used some of the pictures of our family Christmas trip to California and made a 'picture book' for my 1st gr. class. My microphone is not up to par, so the sound didn't come out that great. Need to work on that one. I'll play with the music settings later. I was surprised how user-friendly PhotoStory is. I can't wait to use it enough to pick speed so it won't take too long to put projects together in the classroom. We can make digital storybooks that include family themes, a how-to, a record of an investigation and its results, a biography of someone of great interest to the class, ways to use math manipulatives, a picture dictionary of landforms, etc.
Tool #6
I looked at some of the educational Wikis on Wikispaces and I found such a variety of uses and ideas for the classroom! One classroom started a survey about favorite food to complete a graph, and they ended up having responses from every state in the US, and from all the way around the world, New Zealand! Other Wiki pages were a combination of text and graphics or video, but all had the social learning element as the key. Whether Wikispaces, Googlesites, or Google Docs, the media is just a vehicle, but problem solving, collaboration and work ethic are the real point. I can see using one of those tools during science to record observations during an on-going investigation; in math, to explain a concept with demonstrations or examples generated through group work; in reading, presenting a story through reader's theatre scripted by the students, etc. Comments posted on Googlesites seem to indicate that it's an easy tool to use for students. I'll have to compare and decide which one is easiest to use in my classroom.
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