Podcasting and more...

I think using video clips in the classroom is great! It gets the students excited, gives them another way to understand a concept, and is a great resource for teachers. It’s great to know that there are so many online resources for those teachers brave enough, in some cases, to use them.

The Water Buffalo Video was intriguing. The fact that blog readers took action due to reading each other’s blogs is an interesting and exciting thought. It’s a good example to show that blogging does in fact create community, action, and connectivity. It’s also a good example to show students how blogging can have a bigger purpose. I read some of the comments about the video as far as the other immediate affects this buffalo would have on the family, how the video made someone’s day, etc. It was neat to see how the blogging, then video, led to even further discussion and investigation by readers.

Podcasting…
~With all the ‘things’ teachers need in the classroom that come out of their own pocket money, I think it’s great that podcasting is a free resource available to all, especially one so easy to utilize.
~I love how podcasting can be incorporated into the Reading curriculum, because of its fluency, expression, and delivery assessment uses. It would be great for a student to be able to hear themselves, be able to make changes in their speaking and communicating, and see their progress through the year. (Podcasting is physical proof too for those teachers who need work samples!)
~Another use is its copyright lesson. Along with learning about copyrighting, students can learn about plagiarism in a new sense.
~I love that podcasts can help students be interactive with their peers, their community, and possibly the world. As mentioned in an earlier blog and earlier readings, when students are responsible to a larger audience, they will more-than-likely take more time and care in and have more pride in their work.
~Finally, who wouldn’t want to podcast?! It’s a way to incorporate technology in the classroom, it gets students working collaboratively with their peers, puts them on the Internet as published writers, and they can share it with whomever they choose.

Final Thoughts: Smartboards- could be used to introduce the applications used for creating podcast, along with their other teaching applications!

RSS Perks / Bookmarking

I think RSS is great! No one wants to have wait time anymore, it's a need for instant satisfaction, and with RSS, we don't have to worry about going and get, because 'things' are brought to us. There is a "middle man/computer" in charge of getting us the information that we really want. For example, I love having the Daily Astronomy Picture at the bottom of my Blog, because I love space, and with this RSS feed, I don't have to worry about going and finding cool pictures, because they are brought to me, and are available when I am ready for them.

As much as I like these videos, I don't think this was one of his better shows. He seemed not to be as organized as the others. This shows me that when we want media, we want media at it's perfection, so we aren't distracted.

I tried several Bookmarking sites. I liked mockatoo at first, but once you tagged your sites, there wasn't much more to do with them. stumbleupon wasn't bad, because I liked how it gave you a small picture of the website as a reminder of what it was. However, there were parts of the site that didn't work right, and there was no other way to organize your bookmarks. jumptags and diigo are very similar, since you could organize at a higher level, but jumptags has more advertising on their site that clutters and hides important buttons.
So, I think I'm going with diigo: http://www.diigo.com/list/kgilrocks

Social Bookmarking as a resource

Social Bookmarking

I wish I knew about social bookmarking during college and student teaching so I would still have all of those sites I’ve lost! It would have made my first year teaching a bit easier, instead of having to find all new helpful sites. Personally, I can’t wait to get my del.icio.us site going, so that I can help my friends in the classroom this year, as well as get myself more prepared for next year when I’m back in the classroom. I’m going to introduce it to my Dad, who is a contractor. I think it will help him keep all of his websites organized, instead of the regular bookmarking.

I can really see the uses of social bookmarking in the classroom, because students wouldn’t have to waste time typing a long web address. They would be able to get right into the activity or reading. I’ve had first-hand experience where my students were trying to type in a long address, and some were getting frustrated. This could have been easily avoided, had I had my own del.icio.us site.

Podcasting

Including music in podcasts really livens it up, especially for kids, and especially when it is placed well, i.e. sound effects. In this podcast, the presenter tried incorporating music in the beginning and end of his program, but could have added more as a background in the middle.

Podcasting can be a good way to get listeners to visit your website. At the end of the podcast, the presenter gave his web address. If listeners really liked what they heard, they will more than likely visit your website if you share it.

I found myself multitasking as I listened to the podcast. I was talking to my friend who just got married this weekend, while still listening to the podcast. I think this is something that would/does really appeal to the Net Geners, because they could be listening to a professor’s lecture, while making plans with friends for later. As long as they are really listening of course.

Tech Tools

Tools for TEKS:

• I think it’s a great idea to have student work (projects) published to the web, because it makes them more responsible, and gives them that greater sense of ‘this is important to get right.’ I know that if someone I didn’t know was going to see and possibly critique my work, I would want it to be flawless. This, I believe, would hopefully "raise the bar” of students’ personal expectations for themselves, and in turn teacher expectations.
• Unless a teacher can be physically present when group members meet to work on a project, they will never really know who does what for the final project. By incorporating a wiki into the project, a teacher would be able to better see what contributions each member is giving, by seeing which member added what information to the wiki.
• Using one of the many online photo galleries and editors, people can see their pictures much more quickly. The biggest draw of digital cameras to me, was the fact that I got to see the pictures I took instantaneously. In a classroom, a teacher could easily have a different gallery for her class each year, share that link with parents, and not just be ‘taking pictures for themselves.’ (Of course, the teacher would also have to make a separate permission slip at the beginning of the year, letting parents decide if they want their child’s pictures up or not.)

Tech Tools for Learning:

Streaming video is amazing! When you don’t have the opportunity to see an actual tornado or hurricane, a lightning bolt in slow-motion, or a reenactment of the American Revolution, streaming video is the best! Students in my classroom got to experience Unitedstreaming for the past two years, and they loved it. Every time I said we were going to watch a video, they were excited-they only thought they were getting out of work. One video about the Florida Everglades, I was able to reference several times, along with personal digital images, during a project on endangered animals in the region. Students think they’re just watching a video; teachers know they’re really learning something. You have to be careful, though, when picking videos that are not too advanced or too juvenile for your students, or they will lose interest quickly.

With this project, I think it would have been great to have student teams create podcasts for their endangered animal. Instead of a poster or simple PowerPoint project, students would have had so much more hands-on technology use, and been able to actually use that technology later in their education, whether in high school or college.

Library 2.0 Theory: by Jack Maness

I hadn’t thought about the implications of the web and it’s resources on the Library until I read this article. I worked in our town Library for two years putting books away, and at times, it became very tedious. I can see how using IM-like response technologies would have made it more interactive, not only for me as a worker, but for those patrons who regularly required assistance. It’s strange to think of the huge change that would be made to the traditional idea of Libraries as they incorporate and change with their community. I can also see that there will be many librarians who may be resistant to the changes, as they are used to and like the ‘old’ way of doing things.

My Net Gen - Week 1

Reading through the articles this week, I realized how much technology is really out there, and how much I didn't know about at this point.

Each article drew on the point that our Net Generation likes working in teams, doing community service, prefers images and graphics to text, prefer Internet to phone conversations, like technology use in classrooms but not overly and still crave face-to-face interaction, and has a need for sending and receiving information instantaneously.

I totally agree.

As I continued reading the articles, I noticed the little 'Net Gen things' I was doing:

• talking on the phone while writing an e-mail
• writing an e-mail while reading an article
• watching a video while waiting for an e-mail response
• reading while chatting on IM to a friend teaching an online Biology class having an IM discussion of their own
• realizing that even though I've been on the computer most of the day, I still want to talk with my husband when he gets home, as he jumps on the computer himself...

Even with all that we may do technology-wise, I can see how those born after us have a greater aptitude for technology. My brother, a sophomore in college and 4 years younger than me, is way more technology oriented than I. Educating the Net Gen says, even a few years make a big difference in the way we see technology and the ways we see fit to use it daily. He has two monitors in his dorm room, set upon his tiny tower and an 'old-time' radio, has built his own computer, can text more quickly than I, and so forth. His speed is amazing.

When Diana and James Oblinger refer to immediacy in receiving information in Educating the Net Gen, the following comment is made. “…More value may be placed on speed than accuracy.” When referring to receiving and sending information - I agree and disagree with this comment, because there are many people and children who use abbreviations for phrases while chatting on IM. However, I know that when I chat, that I like to spell things correctly, and often send a separate IM message to correct my misspellings. I like people to think that I’m still educated, even though we are not face-to-face. This brings us back to the point about the Net Gen “believing it’s cool to be smart”.

Educating the Net Gen also mentions "…the rapid pace with which [we] like to receive information means they often choose not to pay attention if a class is not interactive, unengaging, or simply too slow. The Net Gen may need to be encouraged to stop experiencing and spend time reflecting.”

I saw this need for reflection when my Science students used hands-on exploration to discovered different properties about land and water. They would complete an experiment with their group, and more often than not, would rather talk about it than actually write in their Science journals. Forcing this reflections really helped to show who had learned what, and what concepts still needed further discussion; so I think the reflection time is pertinent.

Similarly, Miguel Guhlin mentions in Blogs: Webs of Connected Learning that “It’s not enough to read, it’s also important to write.” This is with anything in the classroom. If a student just reads text and doesn’t apply it to their own life, personal experiences, or circumstances, they are not stretching their minds and adding the information that they just read about.

So many changes need to take place in the classroom, it's difficult to see where to begin as educators. Marc Prensky put it well in Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, "Just do it!" Those of us who call ourselves Digital Natives need to first understand how we learn best, and then apply it to our classrooms and our students.