Last week in class we learned about a few collaborative technologies that could be used in the classroom or in the workplace. First I would like to say that I think that the idea of any collaboration tools, or in this case technologies, is great. As a future teacher, I already know that I want to do as much collaborating as I can with my teaching colleagues and any others who can give me feedback and advice, and if there are tools out there that can make this happen I definitely want to learn about them.
The first program we learned about it called Notemesh. This is a free service that can be used by both teachers and students to expand on each other's ideas and thoughts. It is basically a wiki where questions or topics can be posted by teachers or students, and then others can respond by posting their thoughts. Users can add on or edit other users' responses, ultimately creating posts that could potentially have many different perspectives and ideas. The only thing that I didn't like about this tools was that with each new post, the editor of the previous post was erased. Therefore, there is no way to know or track down the person who posted a certain idea that you might have particularly liked.
One more tool that we learned about that I especially liked was Yugma. With Yugma, many people can be connected from the comfort of their own home or if they are at different offices and hold meetings and/or presentations. One "presenter" is chosen, and all people who are connected to the group can see the presenters desktop and what they have pulled up on it. Other members of the group can also edit whatever the presenter has pulled up and chatting is also available. This technology would be good to use by people who are working offsite or are unable to attend an important meeting or presentation. In schools, it could be used for study sessions or as a teacher-student help session.
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Monday, November 5, 2007
Monday, October 15, 2007
Copyright, images, and mashing!
Last week, we learned about a neat way to share your work in public called creative commons. This type of copyright allows a creator of a work to share parts of it that they want other people to use. I loved the idea of this because it connects people together creatively allowing them to collaborate and expand on each other's works and ideas. Creative commons allows you to create your own free license for your work which could include a blog, a website, a song, an online piece of writing, and much more, and let the viewer know which parts of it they can use in their own work or expand off of.
We also explored Flickr, an online photo sharing website which allows you to upload personal photos and organize them, and also search for photos and download them to create your own personal gallery. Although I am having a rough time setting up my Flickr account, I am very excited to start using it to find photos that I am interested in and set up a gallery for many people to view. I love personal sites like this that you can create and be creative with, and I am very excited to post my pictures along with interesting ones that I find online.
One more thing we looked at last week was Google maps and Google earth. I really enjoyed using Google maps and I loved hearing about all of the different ways that a teacher can use it in their classroom. I especially liked the idea that was mentioned about using it to locate all of the places that Shakespeare has mentioned in his plays. Integrating Google maps into history and language arts would be a very effective visual for students. You can also type out a description to each location that you mark. I did a Google Map on my Study Abroad strip to London this Summer. It was neat to see my routes drawn out on a map and see where the countries that I visited were in relation to each other.
All of these technologies are very fun and useful, not to mention FREE! You might have to play around with them a little to get used to them(like I am still doing with Flickr and Google Earth), but once you master them the possibilities are endless.
We also explored Flickr, an online photo sharing website which allows you to upload personal photos and organize them, and also search for photos and download them to create your own personal gallery. Although I am having a rough time setting up my Flickr account, I am very excited to start using it to find photos that I am interested in and set up a gallery for many people to view. I love personal sites like this that you can create and be creative with, and I am very excited to post my pictures along with interesting ones that I find online.
One more thing we looked at last week was Google maps and Google earth. I really enjoyed using Google maps and I loved hearing about all of the different ways that a teacher can use it in their classroom. I especially liked the idea that was mentioned about using it to locate all of the places that Shakespeare has mentioned in his plays. Integrating Google maps into history and language arts would be a very effective visual for students. You can also type out a description to each location that you mark. I did a Google Map on my Study Abroad strip to London this Summer. It was neat to see my routes drawn out on a map and see where the countries that I visited were in relation to each other.
All of these technologies are very fun and useful, not to mention FREE! You might have to play around with them a little to get used to them(like I am still doing with Flickr and Google Earth), but once you master them the possibilities are endless.
Friday, October 5, 2007
The Advantages of Social Bookmarking
Social bookmarking is a great way to get organized and have a convenient way to access all of your favorite web pages and resources. I am very excited to begin using social bookmarking myself. Right now, all of my favorite websites are listed under my "bookmark" tab on my web browser, and to find one that I want to look at I have to scroll down and find it amongst a wide variety of websites. I have a lot of pages listed, so picking one out of this long list is rather time consuming. With social bookmarking, I can tag my websites and organize them in a way that will be easier for me to go to the ones I want. For example, if there is a specific recipe website that I want to look at, I simply click on the tag marked "cooking" and there they are! I don't have to scroll down my long list of websites and finally find the one I am looking for smashed between a page on Amazon that I bookmarked, and a UTube video. Also, if I am on a different computer, I can easily access my bookmarks by simply logging into my del.icio.us account instead of waiting until I get home to be able to see them on my own computer. It's very convenient!
Social bookmarking can also be beneficial in education for students. Through social bookmarking, users can invite other users to browse their websites. If students are doing reports on the same topic, they can bookmark certain web pages pertaining to that topic, and invite their peers to access them too. That way, the students are getting double the information. Although some of the websites might be the same, there is a good chance that students will have at least one website that other students did not find.
Parents can also use social bookmarking to simplify their online lives, but they can also use it to stay in tune with what is going on in their students' lives and how they can stay involved themselves. In my future classroom, I could have a tag that is especially for parent resource pages that could range from information on disabilities, behavioral problems, ways to get their child involved in the community and the school, and future school and community events that they should be aware of.
I think social bookmarking is a great tool to use to share favorite sites and information. It is also a great way to organize your online world. I already cannot wait to clean out my "favorites" section on my bookmark tab and transfer them into my del.icio.us account.
Social bookmarking can also be beneficial in education for students. Through social bookmarking, users can invite other users to browse their websites. If students are doing reports on the same topic, they can bookmark certain web pages pertaining to that topic, and invite their peers to access them too. That way, the students are getting double the information. Although some of the websites might be the same, there is a good chance that students will have at least one website that other students did not find.
Parents can also use social bookmarking to simplify their online lives, but they can also use it to stay in tune with what is going on in their students' lives and how they can stay involved themselves. In my future classroom, I could have a tag that is especially for parent resource pages that could range from information on disabilities, behavioral problems, ways to get their child involved in the community and the school, and future school and community events that they should be aware of.
I think social bookmarking is a great tool to use to share favorite sites and information. It is also a great way to organize your online world. I already cannot wait to clean out my "favorites" section on my bookmark tab and transfer them into my del.icio.us account.
Monday, October 1, 2007
My morning at the Technology Conference
This past Saturday morning I attended the Technology Conference at Erickson Hall. From it, I took a lot of good ideas and resources involving technology that I can hopefully use during my internship year and in my future classroom. The first hour was a general introduction about different ways that you can use free technology resources in your classroom. It covered a lot of the information that we have been covering in CEP416 including Blogger, Wiki and del.icio.us. It made me very thankful that I am actually taking the CEP416 course this semester because it was very hard to get the full affect of the resources just through the presentation in that short amount of time.
The first session I attended was called "Using Technology to Promote Authentic Learning." To be honest, I didn't get much out of this presentation until the very end. The point that the presenter was trying to make through the activity that he was having us do was that you can do that activity or other activities with your own class and take pictures of them as you go. Then you can upload the pictures into a presentation and study them, looking at what each student is doing and how they are engaged in the activity. From studying these pictures, the teacher can then decide how they can change their strategies to fit the engagement levels of the different students, and how they can promote the best learning possible for each student as an individual. Basically, he was telling us how the teacher can use this particular technology to improve their teaching.
The second session that I attended was very informative. It had to do with integrating technology into language arts and social studies. The different sources of technology that were presented were podcasts, Google maps, classroom wikis, digital stories, and different types of literacy software. I especially enjoyed the ideas of the podcasts and the digital stories. Using these resources, students could actually create a version of a historical event or story that is their own while also showcasing their creative and imaginative abilities. By doing this, I believe that the students would better absorb the information and be able to retrieve it more effectively in the future by thinking back to this activity.
For the most part I enjoyed the technology conference, and I am very glad that I attended it because I got some great resources and ideas that I can hopefully integrate into my future classroom. It also made me even more happy that I am in CEP416 and that I have a whole semester to experiment and learn about some of these different technologies more in depth.
The first session I attended was called "Using Technology to Promote Authentic Learning." To be honest, I didn't get much out of this presentation until the very end. The point that the presenter was trying to make through the activity that he was having us do was that you can do that activity or other activities with your own class and take pictures of them as you go. Then you can upload the pictures into a presentation and study them, looking at what each student is doing and how they are engaged in the activity. From studying these pictures, the teacher can then decide how they can change their strategies to fit the engagement levels of the different students, and how they can promote the best learning possible for each student as an individual. Basically, he was telling us how the teacher can use this particular technology to improve their teaching.
The second session that I attended was very informative. It had to do with integrating technology into language arts and social studies. The different sources of technology that were presented were podcasts, Google maps, classroom wikis, digital stories, and different types of literacy software. I especially enjoyed the ideas of the podcasts and the digital stories. Using these resources, students could actually create a version of a historical event or story that is their own while also showcasing their creative and imaginative abilities. By doing this, I believe that the students would better absorb the information and be able to retrieve it more effectively in the future by thinking back to this activity.
For the most part I enjoyed the technology conference, and I am very glad that I attended it because I got some great resources and ideas that I can hopefully integrate into my future classroom. It also made me even more happy that I am in CEP416 and that I have a whole semester to experiment and learn about some of these different technologies more in depth.
Saturday, September 22, 2007
My Search on The Hershey Company
I am very interested in how food is produced and made, especially candy. I love to watch the show Modern Marvels on the History Channel whenever they have one about candy and snacks, especially holiday food. I was trying to think of a specific type of candy I could do my search on, and then I saw my Hershey's pillow on my couch that I got from the Hershey's store in Chicago last Summer, and I decided that The Hershey Company would be a fun topic to search. Here is some information that I found:
Some facts about the history of the Hershey Company:
Before I officially learned how to operate a search engine properly, I would just type in a lot of words and use the first websites that came up. Learning about the different types of search operators has made my searches so much more specific and has brought up more reliable websites for me to obtain my information off of. I think my favorite search operator and the one I most frequently use is the ~operator to put in front of a word to gets its synonyms. I also like the + operator because it gives me no variations of the word and allows me to search for the exact word or phrase that I am looking for. I feel like searching is now much more efficient and reliable for me, and I am excited to use these operators and the tools that I learned in class in searches for school and for my personal searches like the one I did above.
Some facts about the history of the Hershey Company:
- The Hershey Company was created in in 1894 by Milton Hershey, a candy-manufacturer who desired his caramels to be coated with a sweet chocolate
- The first products of The Hershey Company were milk chocolate in the form of bars and wafers
- The Hershey's Kiss was created in 1907. The started out as being individually wrapped squares in silver foil, but when machine wrapping came to be in 1921 they took on their current form with the signature "plume" to represent it as a genuine product.
- The introduction of new products in the 1920's (Mr. Goodbar, Krackel Bar, Hershey's syrup, and chocolate chips) helped the company through the Great Depression helping them avoid lay offs.
- The Hershey's Company supplied chocolate to "Harry" Reese's Company to coat over his peanut butter. In 1956 seven years after Harry's death, the H.B. Reese Company was sold to The Hershey Corporation.
- Today, the Hershey Company holds the spot of the top North American manufacturer of chocolate and non-chocolate products.
- Cadbury's Creme Egg
- Kit Kat Bars (ususally made by Nestle except in the United States)
- Mr. Goodbar
- Rolo
- Whoppers
- Whatchamacallit
- Koolerz and Ice Breakers gum
- Good & Plenty
- Jolly Rancher
- The Milton Hershey school, founded in 1909, provides an education from students coming from families of financial or social need.
- Each year, the company donates to hundreds of community organizations.
- Employees have volunteered and raised millions of dollars for the children's Miracle Network.
- Have made a five year $500,000 commitment to the United Negro College Fund.
- in 2005, the company turned York Peppermint Patti packaging pink in support of Young Survival Coalition, a group of breast cancer patients and survivors.
- Recycle 90% of their waste through their own recycling company
- Uses energy-saving technology
- Sponsors Hershey's Track and Field Games which encourages youth fitness
- The lamps in Hershey, PA are shaped like Hershey's kisses
- It takes about 95 Hershey's Kisses to equal one pound of chocolate
- The world's largest Hershey Kiss stood six feet nine inches tall and weighed 6,759 pounds
Before I officially learned how to operate a search engine properly, I would just type in a lot of words and use the first websites that came up. Learning about the different types of search operators has made my searches so much more specific and has brought up more reliable websites for me to obtain my information off of. I think my favorite search operator and the one I most frequently use is the ~operator to put in front of a word to gets its synonyms. I also like the + operator because it gives me no variations of the word and allows me to search for the exact word or phrase that I am looking for. I feel like searching is now much more efficient and reliable for me, and I am excited to use these operators and the tools that I learned in class in searches for school and for my personal searches like the one I did above.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Discovering RSS Readers
The web can be a pretty overwhelming place to search for information that you want. Websites and blogs are being updated all the time, and we aren't always aware of when this is happening, causing the possibility of missing out on new interesting information. RSS reader creates a solution to this problem. Through RSS reader, you can subscribe to different websites and blogs, and you are informed when new information has been added or a new post has been put up. It serves as a simple browsing tool that you can organize all of your most viewed and favorite sites and blogs in. This way, you can simply scroll to the site or blog you wish to see and click, and there it is for your viewing pleasure.
RSS reader is especially beneficial in the classroom. In the case of Blogging as we did in CEP416, you can make a folder of your class blogs and have easy access to them whenever you want to read them. This way, you don't have to waste time looking up the blog site, type it in, and then see if it has been updated. With RSS reader, the site is already stored and just a click away. Instead, you simply have to dedicate about five minutes to add all of your classmate's blogs into your reader. In the classroom, RSS reader can also help save and organize sites for different projects and reports a student might be doing. A student can group a list of sites together in a folder for a particular report and be able to refer back to them whenever they need to.
The only disadvantage to RSS reader has to do with Blogging, and it is the fact that not all of the posts are going to be of interest to you. You might be interested in the general idea of the Blog, but not every post is going to be something you want to read. Still there is a upside to this. Even though not all new posts will be what you are looking for in the Blog, an updated post could strike up a new source of interest and convince you to search for other Blogs that might relate more in detail to that topic.
RSS readers will ultimately make the web less overwhelming and because it will seem so much easier and less stressful, you may even find yourself doing more online reading than you did before.
RSS reader is especially beneficial in the classroom. In the case of Blogging as we did in CEP416, you can make a folder of your class blogs and have easy access to them whenever you want to read them. This way, you don't have to waste time looking up the blog site, type it in, and then see if it has been updated. With RSS reader, the site is already stored and just a click away. Instead, you simply have to dedicate about five minutes to add all of your classmate's blogs into your reader. In the classroom, RSS reader can also help save and organize sites for different projects and reports a student might be doing. A student can group a list of sites together in a folder for a particular report and be able to refer back to them whenever they need to.
The only disadvantage to RSS reader has to do with Blogging, and it is the fact that not all of the posts are going to be of interest to you. You might be interested in the general idea of the Blog, but not every post is going to be something you want to read. Still there is a upside to this. Even though not all new posts will be what you are looking for in the Blog, an updated post could strike up a new source of interest and convince you to search for other Blogs that might relate more in detail to that topic.
RSS readers will ultimately make the web less overwhelming and because it will seem so much easier and less stressful, you may even find yourself doing more online reading than you did before.
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