Below is my first so called attempt at videosharing. I realize that it is not a true video, but we don't have a webcam, so I have to make due with what is available. I used Windows Movie Maker to create a video using still pictures. For a first-time user, it was quite easy to create my "masterpiece." The only difficulty that I had was choosing suitable music - that took much longer than creating the video! Once I was finished creating my video, I had to decide where I would upload the video. I didn't think that it was appropriate for Teachertube, so I decided to use Youtube. The process was fairly easy once I signed up, and the only real difficulty I had was actually trying to figure out how to get it to show up on my blog, rather than hyperlinking it as I have done with the past videos that I have viewed.
So what can videosharing add to teaching and learning?
Besides what I have mentioned in a previous blog about teachers using videos to enhance lessons, and students using them as means of presenting knowledge, there are other benefits as well. As some teachers (me included) are just figuring out, our students are teaching themselves how to use many of the web tools that are available. But the important thing to think about is that they don't necessarily think of this as learning, rather they are thinking about it as a necessary means of social networking. They don't realize that they are infact analyzing, manipulating and synthesizing information, as well as collaborating with others and creating amazing products.
Further to this, Young makes an interesting observation in "The Chronical of Higher Education" when he states that "Web video opens a new form of public intellectualism to scholars looking to participate in an increasingly visual culture" (January 25, 2008). Video sharing sites allow people to seek out information. People tend to educate themselves on topics of personal interest, and because the videos are short bits of information, most not longer than 5 minutes, they are effective in maintaining people's attention spans and providing them with the desired knowledge.
What really made an impact on me is Michael Wesch's comments that "Web video offers a new way for scholars to communicate,. . ., noting that he wrote a scholarly article about the same ideas he put in his video, but that the article might be read by only a small number of scholars." (Young, 2008) That would be ashame, as the information that he presents in An anthropological introduction to Youtube helps to explain the impact that Youtube has had, and will continue to have, on society.
Finally, because our youth are so visually inclined and stimulated, educators need to be encouraged to use web media within the classroom in order to maintain students' interest. I know that I will now make a conscious effort to scan Youtube and Teachertube for interesting tidbits to enrich the learning environment in my classroom.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Teachertube - An interesting resource!
This morning I have had the opportunity to explore Teachertube, and I was quite impressed by what I saw. I like the idea that I don't have to wade through all of the videosharing files on Youtube to find something relevant and appropriate for my Social Studies or English classroom.
To begin my exploration, I decided to do a search on the French revolution, as that is what we will be studying in the coming weeks in S.S. 9. So I started by looking at the options on Youtube, and found many of the videos contained inappropriate content, and were more of a satire of the revolution, but there was The French Revolution Rap - JC which appears to be a presentation created by a student for a teacher or class. I thought it was quite a clever video, and although some of it is difficult to understand, I might consider showing it to my class just for fun. I then went to Teachertube and found a few listings for the French revolution - many of which were obviously student produced projects for a teacher: Reign of Terror & Jack and Jill - French Revolution . Up to this point, I had only thought of videosharing sites as an option for me to present videos to students about certain topics, but clearly I was not thinking about how students could use it to submit a project to me! This seems like a great way of using videosharing, and the possibilities are endless.
I thought about what students would have to do, or have access to, in order to be able to do this, and it seems likely that many would have the means at home. The only stumbling block that I encountered was that in order for students to sign up to upload videos to Teachertube, they must be at least 18 years old, whereas on Youtube students only need to be 13 years old. I can understand the age limit of 13, as I would think that there numerous legal issues for schools surrounding the posting of student videos. However, I don't quite understand the age limit of 18 on Teachertube. As an educator, I would prefer that if my students were to upload a video in order to share it with other students and teachers, they be allowed to use Teachertube because I think it might be a "safer" environment with more purposeful viewers.
I spent some time exploring Teachertube for personal interest, and found Did You Know?2.0 and Pay Attention (I notice that someone in class already posted this on the interesting weblinks in WebCT) videos which could be used as clip for a staff meeting or department meeting to lead into a discussion about using technology in the classroom. These clips could be quite effective in that they are not too long, and provide fascinating pieces of information. Further to this, I was surprised to find an interesting video clip called Do We Really Need Teacher-Librarians? I was fortunate enough to stumble across this in the Groups section under EDES 501 - I guess that's us!
To begin my exploration, I decided to do a search on the French revolution, as that is what we will be studying in the coming weeks in S.S. 9. So I started by looking at the options on Youtube, and found many of the videos contained inappropriate content, and were more of a satire of the revolution, but there was The French Revolution Rap - JC which appears to be a presentation created by a student for a teacher or class. I thought it was quite a clever video, and although some of it is difficult to understand, I might consider showing it to my class just for fun. I then went to Teachertube and found a few listings for the French revolution - many of which were obviously student produced projects for a teacher: Reign of Terror & Jack and Jill - French Revolution . Up to this point, I had only thought of videosharing sites as an option for me to present videos to students about certain topics, but clearly I was not thinking about how students could use it to submit a project to me! This seems like a great way of using videosharing, and the possibilities are endless.
I thought about what students would have to do, or have access to, in order to be able to do this, and it seems likely that many would have the means at home. The only stumbling block that I encountered was that in order for students to sign up to upload videos to Teachertube, they must be at least 18 years old, whereas on Youtube students only need to be 13 years old. I can understand the age limit of 13, as I would think that there numerous legal issues for schools surrounding the posting of student videos. However, I don't quite understand the age limit of 18 on Teachertube. As an educator, I would prefer that if my students were to upload a video in order to share it with other students and teachers, they be allowed to use Teachertube because I think it might be a "safer" environment with more purposeful viewers.
I spent some time exploring Teachertube for personal interest, and found Did You Know?2.0 and Pay Attention (I notice that someone in class already posted this on the interesting weblinks in WebCT) videos which could be used as clip for a staff meeting or department meeting to lead into a discussion about using technology in the classroom. These clips could be quite effective in that they are not too long, and provide fascinating pieces of information. Further to this, I was surprised to find an interesting video clip called Do We Really Need Teacher-Librarians? I was fortunate enough to stumble across this in the Groups section under EDES 501 - I guess that's us!
Friday, September 26, 2008
Youtube - Initial Thoughts
I started watching Michael Wesch's presentation An anthropological introduction to Youtube, (Please notice that I finally figured out how to link sites to my blog, using words rather than just the web address - there's always something to figure out! (-: ) on Tuesday morning, but was unable to finish it until today (more about that later). I thoroughly enjoyed his presentation, and found it captivating because he used so many Youtube clips to support his discussion. The concepts he spoke about were amazing, and entirely new to me, but they became obvious once he presented and discussed them.
I then went on to watch his presentation Web 2.0 . . . The Machine is Us/ing Us. This is when I realized that, if I wanted to, I could spend days watching videos on my computer. Not only am I able to watch videos to support my learning in EDES 501, but I could use them to enhance my teaching. Although I have been aware of Youtube, and its potential to be quite useful in my classroom, I haven't actually explored or used it yet. The first reason being that up until this year, I didn't have the technology available to me in my classroom to do this; however, as of the end of last June, I can now hook up an LCD projector to my computer and show videos. This is pretty exciting for me, but this leads to my second reason for not yet having explored Youtube or Teachertube - I just can't seem to find the time!
Fortunately for me, and for my students, I will be exploring videosharing and thinking about where I can go with it over the next few weeks. However, one problem that did come up for me, and I would not have thought about this before, is that last night when I tried to access Wesch's presentation in order to finish watching it, I was unable to. There was a message saying that the video was unavailable for viewing at this time. I am uncertain why this occurred, but this could be a problem (and a big surprise) if I did select a video for viewing with my class. I will have to investigate further as to whether or not these can be saved somehow.
I then went on to watch his presentation Web 2.0 . . . The Machine is Us/ing Us. This is when I realized that, if I wanted to, I could spend days watching videos on my computer. Not only am I able to watch videos to support my learning in EDES 501, but I could use them to enhance my teaching. Although I have been aware of Youtube, and its potential to be quite useful in my classroom, I haven't actually explored or used it yet. The first reason being that up until this year, I didn't have the technology available to me in my classroom to do this; however, as of the end of last June, I can now hook up an LCD projector to my computer and show videos. This is pretty exciting for me, but this leads to my second reason for not yet having explored Youtube or Teachertube - I just can't seem to find the time!
Fortunately for me, and for my students, I will be exploring videosharing and thinking about where I can go with it over the next few weeks. However, one problem that did come up for me, and I would not have thought about this before, is that last night when I tried to access Wesch's presentation in order to finish watching it, I was unable to. There was a message saying that the video was unavailable for viewing at this time. I am uncertain why this occurred, but this could be a problem (and a big surprise) if I did select a video for viewing with my class. I will have to investigate further as to whether or not these can be saved somehow.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Some "ah-ha" moments
I feel like some things are starting to come together for me with regards to EDES 501. Even though I still feel completely overwhelmed by all of the information that I am reading and learning about, I finally figured out what I need to do to meet the requirements of the course. It was slightly stressful last week when I realized a little too late that I was supposed to create an inquiry question for further discussion. However, now I have reread everything, and laid it all out on a calendar - this will help to keep the visual learner in me organized.
One aspect of setting up my blog that confused me was how to customize my blog. I was viewing all of these great blogs from class members and couldn't figure out how they made this work for them. However, as I was playing around the other day, I discovered the "add accessories" section - now I can be just like everyone else! I also figured out how to add blog addresses to my blog. I decided to add only professional development blogs, rather than my class member's blogs because I already have their blogs linked to bloglines.
I have been thinking about Flickr and wondering where exactly all the pictures are stored. Is there going to come a time when Flickr won't be able to continue storing my pictures because I will have used up my personal storage space? I don't quite understand the finer points of how all of the information is kept on the Internet, and likely this is why I am wondering about these things.
I still haven't set up my Facebook account, but I will work on this in the coming days. There is so much out there to explore that sometimes it feels like a black hole. I find myself exploring one thing, and then going off in several different directions because it is so easy to do with all of the hyperlinks, etc. This must be how many of our students have become so knowledgeable about the Web and what it has to offer.
One aspect of setting up my blog that confused me was how to customize my blog. I was viewing all of these great blogs from class members and couldn't figure out how they made this work for them. However, as I was playing around the other day, I discovered the "add accessories" section - now I can be just like everyone else! I also figured out how to add blog addresses to my blog. I decided to add only professional development blogs, rather than my class member's blogs because I already have their blogs linked to bloglines.
I have been thinking about Flickr and wondering where exactly all the pictures are stored. Is there going to come a time when Flickr won't be able to continue storing my pictures because I will have used up my personal storage space? I don't quite understand the finer points of how all of the information is kept on the Internet, and likely this is why I am wondering about these things.
I still haven't set up my Facebook account, but I will work on this in the coming days. There is so much out there to explore that sometimes it feels like a black hole. I find myself exploring one thing, and then going off in several different directions because it is so easy to do with all of the hyperlinks, etc. This must be how many of our students have become so knowledgeable about the Web and what it has to offer.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
July 2008 #2
Using Picnik, I was able to rotate the photo so that the sand dollar is the right way up, and I was able to adjust the colour setting so that they seem to be clearer.
To photo share, or not to share? That is the question.
Photosharing is the topic of the week, and it has been on my mind and at my fingertips for the last few days. Not having ever used a photo sharing site, I took it upon myself to check out a few different ones: http://www.flickr.com/, http://picasa.google.com/ and http://photobucket.com/ were the lucky few. My theory was that I could probably handle looking at three different options, but after that, they would all become muddled together.
The Exploration:
Each site offered many of the same options: uploading 100 MB of pics; allowing family and friends to view pictures; editing of pictures, and organizing photos. My journey began by looking at Flickr because that was the photo sharing site that was mentioned in Richardson's book, as well as in Joanne's outline. This was fairly straightforward, as all I needed to do was create a google account. This site had a handy tour that I could take, and while I was taking the tour, I noticed that there were many other projects that could be created on Flickr; two of the most appealing were MOO "tiny, wonderful photo calling cards" and Blurb "bookstore quality books, by you". I can definitely see a lot of potential for these with my English and Social Studies classes, but more about that later.
Next I went on to explore Picasa 3. This site had a very informative video entitled "See what's new in Picasa 3". After the video I was leaning heavily towards using Picasa, but once I entered the site, I found it to be much more advanced than I needed it to be. This site seems to be designed for the more "professional" photographer, who wants to take the time to edit, and adjust photos to perfection. Unfortunately at this stage in my life, this isn't for me, so I decided that Picasa wasn't going to be my choice this time around. Further to this, I wondered about its usefulness with students.
Finally I checked out Photobucket. I was immediately turned off by this site because of the "busyness" of it. I was also concerned by the example photos that are on the first page before you login to Photobucket - one of which is entitled "sexy" and showed some fairly provocative pictures. This would definitely NOT be an option for me, and probably most teachers because even though the potential for students to find inappropriate pictures is always there, it isn't quite so easily accessible.
By Process of Elimination . . .
Flickr became the photo sharing site of choice. This meant that I needed to start playing around with some of my pics. This was incredibly easy, as the "upload" feature immediately connected to all of my pictures on my hard drive. I decided to choose some recent pictures that I had taken while we were at the beach. Then I had to make some decisions about whether or not these would be public photos, or whether they were private. I decided the pictures that didn't include my daughter in them would be public, and the rest were private. Despite the fact that many other people have posted pics of their children, I am still quite cautious.
I proceeded to play around with the pics, and I even posted two of my favourites to my blog. This was also quite easy to do, and made me think about the possibilities available to my English students.
Possibilities Galore:
I didn't really begin to see the possibilities of photo sharing in the classroom until I stopped thinking about how this was going to be great for me and my family. I was quite excited by the fact that I would be able to upload pictures that my both my brothers, one in Fort McMurray the other in Germany, could easily access!
However then I started to think about what this could mean for my students. For my English students there are endless possibilities to use photos to enhance their writing and poetry portfolios - Richardson talks about "Jakes, . . . [who] decided to create an imaged version of the poem 'Chicago' . . . by linking Flickr photos to the more tagable words in the poem." What a great idea! I can see students using this to help them get the creative juices flowing when they are writing. Not only that, I could annotate a picture with notes, which could be useful when doing a novel study and trying to map out the setting.
As for my Social Studies students, I could see how I could use Flickr to create a slide show of places that we will talk about throughout the year, and the mapping function sounds interesting, but I thought that there might be more. So I checked out some web sites and here are just a few that that have some good ideas:
http://www.teachinghacks.com/wiki/index.php?title=Photo_Sharing_in_Education
http://www.teachinghacks.com/files//100ideasWeb2educators.pdf
http://thinkingmachine.pbwiki.com/Think+Photo+Sharing+with+Flickr
What's next:
First of all, I need to become comfortable with Flickr and its possibilites, which I anticipate will be fairly easy, as I am excited about using it. Also, I need to look at what I am going to be teaching, and then start small. I have to come up with a lesson that will only take one period, which is 80 mins., where I can introduce Flickr, and then require students to create a product - perhaps a slide show, that they can share with the class.
Final thoughts:
As I am discovering, there are so many great opportunities available through Web. 2.0 tools to enhance one's teaching, and I am excited about trying to incorporate some of these. The only thing that I keep wondering about is how to access computer time. When I read Richardson's, and Solomon and Schrum's books, I feel excited, yet somewhat discouraged and frustrated that I don't have daily or even weekly access to computers. I feel like we, as educators, are disservicing our students by not having more occassions for them to explore these powerful teaching and learning tools.
The Exploration:
Each site offered many of the same options: uploading 100 MB of pics; allowing family and friends to view pictures; editing of pictures, and organizing photos. My journey began by looking at Flickr because that was the photo sharing site that was mentioned in Richardson's book, as well as in Joanne's outline. This was fairly straightforward, as all I needed to do was create a google account. This site had a handy tour that I could take, and while I was taking the tour, I noticed that there were many other projects that could be created on Flickr; two of the most appealing were MOO "tiny, wonderful photo calling cards" and Blurb "bookstore quality books, by you". I can definitely see a lot of potential for these with my English and Social Studies classes, but more about that later.
Next I went on to explore Picasa 3. This site had a very informative video entitled "See what's new in Picasa 3". After the video I was leaning heavily towards using Picasa, but once I entered the site, I found it to be much more advanced than I needed it to be. This site seems to be designed for the more "professional" photographer, who wants to take the time to edit, and adjust photos to perfection. Unfortunately at this stage in my life, this isn't for me, so I decided that Picasa wasn't going to be my choice this time around. Further to this, I wondered about its usefulness with students.
Finally I checked out Photobucket. I was immediately turned off by this site because of the "busyness" of it. I was also concerned by the example photos that are on the first page before you login to Photobucket - one of which is entitled "sexy" and showed some fairly provocative pictures. This would definitely NOT be an option for me, and probably most teachers because even though the potential for students to find inappropriate pictures is always there, it isn't quite so easily accessible.
By Process of Elimination . . .
Flickr became the photo sharing site of choice. This meant that I needed to start playing around with some of my pics. This was incredibly easy, as the "upload" feature immediately connected to all of my pictures on my hard drive. I decided to choose some recent pictures that I had taken while we were at the beach. Then I had to make some decisions about whether or not these would be public photos, or whether they were private. I decided the pictures that didn't include my daughter in them would be public, and the rest were private. Despite the fact that many other people have posted pics of their children, I am still quite cautious.
I proceeded to play around with the pics, and I even posted two of my favourites to my blog. This was also quite easy to do, and made me think about the possibilities available to my English students.
Possibilities Galore:
I didn't really begin to see the possibilities of photo sharing in the classroom until I stopped thinking about how this was going to be great for me and my family. I was quite excited by the fact that I would be able to upload pictures that my both my brothers, one in Fort McMurray the other in Germany, could easily access!
However then I started to think about what this could mean for my students. For my English students there are endless possibilities to use photos to enhance their writing and poetry portfolios - Richardson talks about "Jakes, . . . [who] decided to create an imaged version of the poem 'Chicago' . . . by linking Flickr photos to the more tagable words in the poem." What a great idea! I can see students using this to help them get the creative juices flowing when they are writing. Not only that, I could annotate a picture with notes, which could be useful when doing a novel study and trying to map out the setting.
As for my Social Studies students, I could see how I could use Flickr to create a slide show of places that we will talk about throughout the year, and the mapping function sounds interesting, but I thought that there might be more. So I checked out some web sites and here are just a few that that have some good ideas:
http://www.teachinghacks.com/wiki/index.php?title=Photo_Sharing_in_Education
http://www.teachinghacks.com/files//100ideasWeb2educators.pdf
http://thinkingmachine.pbwiki.com/Think+Photo+Sharing+with+Flickr
What's next:
First of all, I need to become comfortable with Flickr and its possibilites, which I anticipate will be fairly easy, as I am excited about using it. Also, I need to look at what I am going to be teaching, and then start small. I have to come up with a lesson that will only take one period, which is 80 mins., where I can introduce Flickr, and then require students to create a product - perhaps a slide show, that they can share with the class.
Final thoughts:
As I am discovering, there are so many great opportunities available through Web. 2.0 tools to enhance one's teaching, and I am excited about trying to incorporate some of these. The only thing that I keep wondering about is how to access computer time. When I read Richardson's, and Solomon and Schrum's books, I feel excited, yet somewhat discouraged and frustrated that I don't have daily or even weekly access to computers. I feel like we, as educators, are disservicing our students by not having more occassions for them to explore these powerful teaching and learning tools.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Trying to pull things together
Whew!! I managed to survive yesterday's desperate attempts to get a handle on all of this information about blogs, RSS feeds, etc.
I spent much of the morning trying to figure out the RSS feed information, which lead me to Joanne's "trailfires". I didn't quite understand how they worked, but apparently someone else in the course didn't either. Fortunately, they asked the essential question, to which there was an answer that helped me to follow the trailfire on RSS feeds. Once I figured it out, I found it to be quite useful, inparticular the little comments that Joanne provides as you work your way through it. I was, however, a little disappointed that the page with the video didn't work anymore.
So, thinking that I had a handle on what these "things" are, I went to Technorati and signed up there. The only problem was that it was WAY too confusing for me. I found a blog that I wanted to follow, but I couldn't figure out how to add this to my profile. I spent about 3/4 of an hour trying to figure this out, and then the meltdown hit. How can I possibly have gotten myself into this course??? Was I absolutely crazy thinking that I could do this??? Fortunately it was at this time that my husband came home, calmly told me that all would be well, and that it was time for me to move on to something else.
So, I did not go any further on what I was doing. Instead I ran around like crazy doing housework, and finally went to Nanaimo to do a big grocery shop and pick up our daughter from a friend's house. I decided to sleep on it and hoped things would look better in the morning.
They did. I went through the section on RSS in Richardson's book and I decided that I would join bloglines instead, and that allowed me to follow the step-by-step instructions in his book. This was MUCH easier. Infact, I subscribed to his blog, AND I subscribed to all of the blogs from my classmates in EDES 501. Not only that, but I also created a folder to put them all together. I am feeling rather proud of myself, but I continue to feel the anxiety in the pit of my stomach. I wonder . . . . will this go away at all this semester?
I spent much of the morning trying to figure out the RSS feed information, which lead me to Joanne's "trailfires". I didn't quite understand how they worked, but apparently someone else in the course didn't either. Fortunately, they asked the essential question, to which there was an answer that helped me to follow the trailfire on RSS feeds. Once I figured it out, I found it to be quite useful, inparticular the little comments that Joanne provides as you work your way through it. I was, however, a little disappointed that the page with the video didn't work anymore.
So, thinking that I had a handle on what these "things" are, I went to Technorati and signed up there. The only problem was that it was WAY too confusing for me. I found a blog that I wanted to follow, but I couldn't figure out how to add this to my profile. I spent about 3/4 of an hour trying to figure this out, and then the meltdown hit. How can I possibly have gotten myself into this course??? Was I absolutely crazy thinking that I could do this??? Fortunately it was at this time that my husband came home, calmly told me that all would be well, and that it was time for me to move on to something else.
So, I did not go any further on what I was doing. Instead I ran around like crazy doing housework, and finally went to Nanaimo to do a big grocery shop and pick up our daughter from a friend's house. I decided to sleep on it and hoped things would look better in the morning.
They did. I went through the section on RSS in Richardson's book and I decided that I would join bloglines instead, and that allowed me to follow the step-by-step instructions in his book. This was MUCH easier. Infact, I subscribed to his blog, AND I subscribed to all of the blogs from my classmates in EDES 501. Not only that, but I also created a folder to put them all together. I am feeling rather proud of myself, but I continue to feel the anxiety in the pit of my stomach. I wonder . . . . will this go away at all this semester?
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Setting up my blog has been an interesting process, in that I needed to decide what bits of information I was willing or not willing to share. At the moment I am still quite cautious about how much info I want to have "out there" on the big wide Web. I found Richardson's section about "Keeping Students Safe" helpful, but not being used to having so many people access info about me, I have, for the moment, kept it quite limited.
As for what blog publishing tool I used, I chose blogger because several people at the high school I teach at recommended it to me, and it was also listed in the course outline. I found further affirmation when I noticed that several other members of EDES 501 were using blogger. So, for now, I am happy with this blog creating tool as it seems to be straightforward to use, and it didn't require any great brainpower to setup.
Because I am still a "paper-loving" person, I have managed to print off most of the course readings with the exception of a couple that I seem to be having difficulty finding. One of which is "Nailing digital jelly to a virtual tree" because it doesn't seem to be available through the U of A library anymore. So, today I will try to spend some time "nailing" down that document, as well as the other two which I haven't yet accessed.
I am also determined to figure out the "RSS feed" stuff. I noticed that Richardson has a detailed chapter on that in his book as well. Further to that, I need to sign up for a social networking account. Funny, last year I swore that I would never do that, and here I am today, trying to figure out how to make this all work for me. I am now beginning to develop a better appreciation for the knowledge that my students have with regards to technology and its many uses. I am coming to the realization that students are perhaps more in control of their learning than many people give them credit for.
As for what blog publishing tool I used, I chose blogger because several people at the high school I teach at recommended it to me, and it was also listed in the course outline. I found further affirmation when I noticed that several other members of EDES 501 were using blogger. So, for now, I am happy with this blog creating tool as it seems to be straightforward to use, and it didn't require any great brainpower to setup.
Because I am still a "paper-loving" person, I have managed to print off most of the course readings with the exception of a couple that I seem to be having difficulty finding. One of which is "Nailing digital jelly to a virtual tree" because it doesn't seem to be available through the U of A library anymore. So, today I will try to spend some time "nailing" down that document, as well as the other two which I haven't yet accessed.
I am also determined to figure out the "RSS feed" stuff. I noticed that Richardson has a detailed chapter on that in his book as well. Further to that, I need to sign up for a social networking account. Funny, last year I swore that I would never do that, and here I am today, trying to figure out how to make this all work for me. I am now beginning to develop a better appreciation for the knowledge that my students have with regards to technology and its many uses. I am coming to the realization that students are perhaps more in control of their learning than many people give them credit for.
Friday, September 12, 2008
The tentative first step
Finally I have found some time to myself to set up my blog. For the last few days I have been wondering if I am really cut out for EDES 501 as I am not nearly as computer literate as I would like to be. However, Will Richardson's book finally arrived in my mailbox, and after having read the first two chapters I am very intrigued by all that Web 2.0 tools (Is that what they are called?) have to offer me and my classes. Not only am I intrigued, but I keep telling myself that it will be good for me (and for my students) to be a learner again.
With the arrival of Will Richardson's book, came Gwen Solomon & Lynn Schrum's book web 2.0 new tools, new schools. My comfort level is starting to increase as I have the familiar feeling of books in my hands. I am still one of those people who prints almost everything off of the computer (So much for the paperless society.) because I like to physically feel what I am working with. Perhaps that is why I like gardening and cooking so much.
I am excited about this course and all that I hope to gain from it. Imagine what I will be able to do in my English and Social Studies classes . . . .
With the arrival of Will Richardson's book, came Gwen Solomon & Lynn Schrum's book web 2.0 new tools, new schools. My comfort level is starting to increase as I have the familiar feeling of books in my hands. I am still one of those people who prints almost everything off of the computer (So much for the paperless society.) because I like to physically feel what I am working with. Perhaps that is why I like gardening and cooking so much.
I am excited about this course and all that I hope to gain from it. Imagine what I will be able to do in my English and Social Studies classes . . . .
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