Flooding technology

I first want to let you know my first impression when I read what we had to do the first week, AAAAAAARRRRGGGGHHH!!!!! I thought, boy is this professor going to get a bunch of emails from me asking how, where, when, what, who, and most importantly, Huh! I just started looking into technology as a tool for education. Blogging? Aggregate? This is all new to me and I have to do it on my own? That was when I knew I got in over my head…

But as I began getting the information and doing the work I realized that it wasn’t that hard to do after all. It took me a little to understand exactly what to do and a lot of IM’s later, but I did it! I am still overwhelmed at the amount of reading that I need t do each night, that is why I usually try to keep my blogs short and to the point. I also have to read for my other class which makes it twice as much reading. I tend to forget what I read where since I read so many blogs and articles. All in all, I believe I have learned more in one week of this class than in all semester of other classes. If I could just get my students to learn that much I would consider myself a great teacher.

Response to Homepages VS RSS Readers

I just can’t help wondering what else is possible with RSS readers if more teachers knew about them. I was reading personal homepages VS RSS readers and love the idea of using it in class for class assignments and to display student work. This will allow the teacher to have access to the students work all in one place while not hindering the students creativity. the students can add pictures and links to their blogs that would help illustrate a point or to show research on a particular topic. I would love to use computers in my classes more because that is what interests my students, but I think my delivery of the topic is not well done. I usually don’t get anything done when I go to the computer lab because the students won’t listen or do what is instructed. I feel that I need to find something on the computer that the students will get excited about. My hope, is then , they will be engaged in a learning environment that is both stimulating and rewarding. Maybe, blogging their thoughts about each day’s class may be something to look into. I don’t know, but am open to ideas. We have 23 emac in a computer lab, plus a lab with pc’s.
THe link to the homepages VS RSS readers is: http://remoteaccess.typepad.com/remote_access/2007/08/personal-homepa.html

Educating for global world

As we discussed before, we are no longer educating our students for the area that we live in. In my area, most students that attend college, don’t come back. Their is nothing local to draw them back. In Clair Maple Memorial Address, http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=41487, she quotes, “the new purpose of education is to create global citizens who can innovate and integrate in the face of complex new demands, who are satisfied and productive individuals and competent and responsible members of their local and global communities… to sustain our democracy and perpetuate freedom.” I feel that this is what our mission statement at school will be soon. The world has given this job to the teachers. I don’t know if this job can been done. Educating students for an ever-changing world for jobs that don’t even exist yet, is a big demand to put on one career. My question is do other countries think this way too? I doubt it. I do believe that in order to achieve this, we would have to have children to adult factories. Our students would have to go through the assembly line until they came out as global citizens. Unfortunately, some may not come out at all. I don’t feel that student can be treated like a product. They are individuals with unique perspectives and ideas to bring to the world. I do think that students can begin to achieve these concepts if they have parents that will help show their child the importance of our global world and an education to help maintain that world. I don’t know the answer to our factory children, but I do think that we need to let them grow with guidance. We can’t hold them back because we don’t know what the future holds.

Distance learning critique

I feel really weird telling other people what I feel is wrong with their view of distance. I feel first that my definition was very “small minded”. By small minded I mean I didn’t think of all the possibilities that are available for distance learning. I assumed first, that is was learning taking place through a college or university where you are paying for the education, but that is not always the case. I needed to look at the big picture of people just learning to learn ( a concept, as a high school teacher, that is not well known to me). I also think that some of us may have limited our ideas of distance learning to our experiences like I did. I had only taken 2 online classes before then, in which we used Blackboard only. This is not a good representation of the abilities of the Internet. I think that that our only flaws are our environment and experiences that hindered our abilities to think outside the box.

personal inquiry ~ stephen’s web

I was reading how learning progresses from discover, define, immerse, build, contribute and then they said they needed to add in HACK. Just wondering if we are going to get there in this class?? (HA HA). On a more serious note, I do feel that we need to start addressing the needs of the students and not just making internet porn harder to get to. Our kids need more from us than to just block what we don’t want them on. We need to teach morals and constantly check and talk with them about what is right and wrong. I think society has gotten so wrapped up in the world that we forgot that our future is our kids that are right there at home.
My life itself begins at 7:00 and ends at 10:00 and them I do the house work and school work and anything else I need to do before the day begins tomorrow all over again. I feel as though I am the only one in the world that has taken on what too much this year, but I know that every teacher feels that way. I just learn to prioritize in order to make it through the day. I am always running around in circle chasing my tail in which I will never catch. Maybe I am beginning to ramble, but it has been a long day and I just feel like letting everyone know that I understand when you lay down at night and make a list in your head of everything you have to get done tomorrow. Then try to sleep, but everything that happened today keeps playing back in your minds. I understand. (Hopefully, I’m not the only one and you all that are reading this think I’m crazy. Let me know if I am crazy so I can get one of those crazy checks I keep hearing about.) I guess, I’ve rambled a bunch, so I will make it shorter next time.

Tapped in

I have been familiarizing myself with my aggregator and tapped in. I went into the tapped in site and was pleasantly surprised to find a person there to help me out. I had been here several times, but never chatted with anyone. It was a little weird to find out that they knew everything about me and where I had been in tapped in, but it was a learning experience that was very beneficial. I thought that the things on the calendar were movies, but then I found out they were just virtual tours through chatting on line with hosts of the tapped in site. I really thing this will be a beneficial site to share with all educators. They had a whole floor for math people that is really neat and they have a podcast competition going on. I would like to find out more about that if anyone knows where you get the words from. I love doing anything with the podcasts because I am just learning how to use them.

Distance

Distance for a math teacher is the shortest route between two points, but when you are talking about distance in communication, that I don’t know what the definition is. Distance used to be a problem before the internet came along. Now everything is accessible in your living room. I don’t think that distance is a factor in education and transferring information anymore. I think that long distance relationships are no longer as far away as they once were. Now people are meeting on the internet.

distance theory and help? (also other comments)

Hello, I think I realized dthat my definition:
“Distance learning is when you are learning in a class where you are not in the presence of the instructor, but are still able to communitcate and learn as if you were. ”

of Distance learning wasn’t quite as elaborate as everyone elses. I feel this is because I am a math techer and like to be a person of few words. Of course, it can always be because of my lack of spelling and I don’t see a spell check on these things (anyone knows how to get one let me know). I have learned so much in the last couple of days. I feel like I will be able to communitcate with the teenagers that I teach. Now I know what they are doing on my space all day. I heard that some stay on it all night. (I know the feeling now!!) I just have one question: HOW DO I post on my blog without erasing the one from the day before? or are you suppose to replace them each time? OK, I have several of you all in my instant messanger, but there are only about 5 that are using Yahoo. I thouth about getting a MSN address too, but I don’t think I can type fast enough to do that. So, unless I have to I think I will stick with yahoo.

I was reading the article that Dr. Lowell wanted us to read about how we are not doing our research accurately and how to tell when we get “good” results. I don’t think that article was written by educators because of the “controll” groups. I feel that our resutls are the best we can do with live students to use in the research. I did an action research class before and it is extremly difficult to get approval to do just about any type of research with different groups of studnets. They want to make sure the studnet that are not gettin the interventiokn will not be hurt from and anyways from the lack of intervention. We spent the whole semester, summer, and 3 weeks of the next semestet getting approval. I hope I am writing this in the right class with the right blog. If you don’t know what I am talking about please let me know so I can put it on the other blog.