Reflection

EDM 310 has been a very beneficial class to me as a future teacher. I have learned great educational tools that I can use in my own classroom. I have learned how to create a podcast, create blogs, use google more effectively and now know more about access. All of these things are going to be pretty helpful in the future. I think that the class atmosphere was also pretty good. I think that interaction between all of the students makes class much more effective and fun. EDM 310 was more of an educational tool rather that a really hard class that stresses students out. I have actually been able to retain some of the things I have learned. I will also be able to use most everything I have learned in and outside of a classroom. I think that there should be more group projects. The podcast project was the most exciting thing for me. Some blogs should be done in the classroom rather than outside of class. Overall, I really have no complaints. EDM 310 was a really great class. Thanks.

Twitter

Twitter is a free social networking service that allows you to post pretty much whatever you want as long as it is 140 characters long. You can also become a follower of someone elses tweets. You can use twitter for personal reasons or for professional reasons. You can limit your followers to your preferance or you can allow anyone to follow your tweets. Some people write about their every day lives. Others post more about professional information such as meeting times and businesss deadlines. Relatives, friends or complete strangers can keep up with your day to day life depending on what you post. I think it is a great way for distant relatives to keep in tune with what their family is up to. As a future teacher I think it is a great way for students to keep up with assignments and other class information. Obviously, if you are going to write personal info that you would not share with students in the classrroom you need to have a separate twitter for your friends to follow. Twitter can be great as long as it is used in a professional manner. I would use twitter to remind students about upcoming and current class work and anything that may be of use to them in the classroom. As far as using twitter for my own personal reasons, I'm not quite sure if I would be interested. I would have to choose who I would want to follow my twitter because it is TMI for strangers.

Podcasts

Kid Cast – This podcast was pretty much taking about all of the different ways you could incorporate an iPod with podcasts in the classroom without allowing passive learning. The speaker wants his listeners to understand how important it is to actively engage students in podcasts as they experience new content. Students should reflect on the podcast, take notes and bookmark, rather than just listen to a podcast passively. He also explains that a good podcast asks questions to actively engage students/listeners. After all, the students will control the podcast they are listening to by pausing and reflecting and even writing in a journal to reflect on their opinions of the podcast.

Mac Break Weekly- Only interesting if you own a Mac, which I do not. I think I will stick with hp after listening to that horribly boring podcast. They also talk about how much they are disappointed with itunes and some of the things that apple is doing. They also talk about twitter imac podcasts and itunes. It seems that they know a lot about this type of technology. Overall, they are just talking about all of the little things that they do not like with certain programs.

TWIP- The speakers are obviously photographers so they seem to talk a lot about CAMERAS. Narcissism, news of the week, pocket wizard and cameras are a few of the different topics that they talk about in their podcast. They also have picks of the week which include flicker, color quality of camera and short films. This podcast did not really keep my attention. They were just all over the board with different topics. Perhaps they should limit their topics.

KidCast- The music was interesting but it definitely made it easier to not exit right out of the podcast. But their voices were very boring it definitely did not sound like they were interested in what they were talking about, which made it hard for me to be interested in what they were taking about.

SmartBoard- Much better podcast because it involved students and teachers connecting with podcasts. They also talked about using white boards/ smartboards in the classroom. The board actually has an internet connection . The speakers actually acted like they were having fun which made it easier to listen to.

International Blogs

The first international blog I found was Mr. Bensons Room 12 blog. This blog was for his 8-9 year olds that attended Mellons Bay School in Auckland, New Zealand. This site included podcasts that were so interesting because the students sounded so much different than students from the United States. The blog also included homework, presentations, photos, school tube and much more. It was a good site for children 8-9 because it was not intimidating and very kid friendly.

http://mellonsbay.blogspot.com/search/label/mindmap


The second international blog I found was Mrs. C's grade 5 and 6 class from Victoria, Australia. Their blog was titled Our Blog 2009. This blog was more of a fun blog for their students to visit. It had a lot of interactive learning sites students were asked to visit and it also had a lot of interesting facts on the blog. Not only was this one blog but it also offered many other blogs that you could visit. Students could play tutpup, launchball, snowflakes and smilebox. All of these links were educational and also fun for the students. This blog is a great site for students to learn and have fun.

http://ourblog.globalstudent.org.au/

Blogs in the United States

The first blog I found was Miller's English 10 Blog which is a blog 10th grade students use to post and submit what ever they are reading or learning about in class at that time.Branford High School is located in Branford, CT. This site must be very useful to these students because they are able to communicate with their teacher and fellow students. The teacher posts many questions that the students must respond to. It seems that this blog is a big part of their grade in this classroom. Not only are they adding posts but they must also create posts in Google Docs. These students blog about poems and books. I am sure my English class might have been more interesting in High School if we had a blog.

http://millersenglish10.blogspot.com/

The second blog I found was Extreme Biology. This blog was created by Stacy Baker who teaches 9th grade biology at Calverton High School in Huntingtown, Maryland. This blog actually won an Edublog award for best class blog. This blog had so many interesting photographs and sites you could visit. You could really tell that Stacy Baker enjoyed teaching biology and her students loved to learn about biology. Students are able to create posts about previous labs they did in class or even something they had done outside of class. Great blog even for someone who is not in the 9th grade.

http://www.missbakersbiologyclass.com/blog/

GDrive

The only problem I see with the GDrive is if everyone goes towards this method of storing and saving their info on Googles servers we may not always be able to access our data. This is because it is technology and my internet goes in and out all of the time. I would be very upset if I had something really important saved on this GDrive and I could not access it because one of their servers were down. Other than that small problem I think the GDrive is a great idea. People will be able to access their information from anywhere and will not have to spend a ton of money on a desktop or laptop computer. I think that the GDrive is a great new piece of technology. I just hope that when this does come that public computers do not charge people to use them.

Changing the way we think

I will have to disagree that google and other internet search engines are some how re-wiring our brains. Yes, you may get a headache from looking at the computer screen for to long but I'm pretty sure my brain is functioning just as well when I first got on the computer. It is not the computer's fault that you can not pay attention while reading a book. People who work at a computer five days a week seem normal to me and are seemingly capable of living in the real world. I think that this article is trying to make us feel that we are going crazy and that the internet is trying to control our brains. We have the ability to control how we think, what we like and what we do. I do believe that people now spend entirely to much time on the computer. Myspace and facebook to me are almost a way for people to say and be what they really are not in real life. People consume themselves with what really does not matter. Computer search engines are great for the classroom because students have so much they can explore at their fingertips.