March 17th Exit Slip

Today in class, it was my job to write what we did today in the Class Organization Wiki. So everything we did today can be found here under the section 2 subpage. Check it out!

March 10th Exit Slip

Today we learned about the world of Scratch. Scratch is a program creating tool, you can create games and lessons and characters. As part of the A contract we will have to create a program in Scratch. Since I have never had a programing class, I am terrified to do this. I will have to download it on my computer and mess around with it to understand how to use it. We also talked about a couple SLC's we could do with Scratch which also sounds terrifying. I guess I'll have to keep looking for a SLC to do. We also have to evaluate each other's smart boards, which makes me nervous because I keep having problems with smart notebook on my computer, but I'll talk to Dr. Boyer and see how it goes..

Contemporary Issue Podcast

So the project I have been worrying about and putting off for the last week or so is finally done. I had to record a podcast about a contemporary issue dealing with technology and add in lead in/lead out music and a sound effect. It was more nerve wrecking than I thought it would be but all in all was pretty easy. I put a lot of effort into this task. It took about 7 different recordings to get it the way I wanted and the whole thing took me about an hour and a half to do. I think this podcast will affect my future teaching by making me aware of the amount of time and thought that goes into making a podcast and how easy they really are to do. I don't know if I would use them with my early childhood students, but it would be a great way to explain things done in class to the parents. I think it turned out pretty good, but I'll let you be the judge. Here it is: 

Julia's Contemporary Issue Podcast.mp3

Last Chapter of Blogs, Wikis, and Podcasts

Well the time has come. We have now read this whole book for our Educational technology course. The last chapter talks about the involvement of the internet in the classroom and how to successfully apply it. It's important for the classroom learning environment to no longer be a way of talking at students, or lecturing them, but a way to have a continuous conversation. In a conversation, the other people involved are able to ask questions, share what they know and learn knew things about the other person or people included in the conversation. It is essential for the students to have questions and to be able to know where to find them; to use the internet as a never ending resource. It is also important to teach students to be aware that their assignments are no longer a one time thing. Everything that is entered into the internet stays there. It can be re-found and shared. It's not like the old days where something is done, graded and then trashed. It is also important to know that even though the internet has been here just a little while, it is still growing and it is still just a child trying to find its place in the world, trying to see, feel and be involved in every exciting thing going on.

Skype Screencast

Today I had to make a screencast for my class. We were to pick a popular technology tool that could be used in the classroom and explain it's strengths, weaknesses, opportunity, and threats in a screencast. I spent an hour on it. I had to re-record a couple times and rewrite the script. I put a lot of work into this. I think this would be a great help in a classroom and although the students wouldn't be able to use it (I'm an early childhood major) it could be very helpful for the parents in order to explain programs being used in the classroom. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you take into consideration that it's my first one! Here it is: My Skype Screencast

March 3 Class Exit Slip

Today in class, we started out with questions. As we are in the middle of the semester, there is much more work to be done. Lots of homework and projects. After the forum of questions was closed, we started talking about our PLC group and how to research and share our information for our projects. We explored new sites like the ones listed here and added them into our delicious account. After exploring these sites, we talked about our podcast project due next week. We learned this week how to use Audacity (the Window's program for recording it). Last week we learned how to do it in Garageband (the Mac program).  We then learned how to share this information with our teacher and to upload it to D2L and share it on our blog. We talked about each thing in great length and our professor was very helpful and stressed greatly how important it is to ask questions if you need to. And that's it. That was our class today.

Chapter 7 and 9 in Blogs, Wikis and Podcasts

In Chapter 7, I learned all about a new photo sharing site. It is called Flicker. Flicker allows photos to be shared, found around the world, talked about and tagged to other things. It's like a mix of a delicious account, a blog and a social networking site. It also allows photo journalism to take place. People are able to find photos on anything and write a story about them, combine them, or simply just comment on them. It is a tool growing fast in popularity and it can even be useful in the classroom. It's like it's own little society where students can learn about different ways to see things or learn about others' ways of expressing themselves. It is very interesting, but I am afraid I do think it has some flaws. I think that although there is a filtering system, students could see images that are inappropriate, or have photos tagged of them that could prevent them from looking professional or getting a job. It's a very useful tool, but I think teachers need to stress the correct way to use it and ways in which it can be harmful instead of just jumping right into it. I'm also curious how this site can be used in an early childhood classroom. Most of the examples in the book were for older grades and the knowledge students would have to know to use it may be too advanced for such a young age.

Chapter 9 talked about the world of Social Networking including sites like Facebook and Ning. These sites need to stop being seen as threats or something we should (as teachers) ban and should be studied and applied in the classroom. Teachers need to teach students about the affect on the internet their students postings have. Imagine how great it could be if teachers and students worked together to socially share information via the internet. Homework could be submitted through these sites, or even art projects. A teacher used Ning (which is a similar sharing site like facebook) to have students express their views and art through the resources of the internet. I think it is important for teachers to know what they are up against and to check out these sites for themselves.