3 A's For The Day

Well it has certainly been awhile...months actually...and I am back...
Today I participated in the 7th session of an IT Module for my Education class, and I need to give my 3 A's for today's session. Here they are:
Aha- That I could find other classrooms that blog on bloggmeister.com
Affirmation: Blogging in the classroom is useful!!!
Application: Blogging of course!!!
Until next time...

When I Am A Teacher...

With ECMP 455 almost a class of the past, I have a lot of reflecting to do.
For our final assignment we are to write a post on our learning and what we hope our future classroom will look like. WOW, where to start...
I guess I will start by saying that what my pedagogical thoughts were before this class have changed, and that I know with each and every class I take in my 3rd year of Education, it will change many times more. I think that I could say that with every post I read over the past 7 weeks, my pedagogy changed somewhat.
And this I believe is one of the most important aspects of learning that I have acquired throughout this class. RSS feeds, RSS feeds, RSS feeds and then more RSS feeds!
We started the class off learning about RSS feeds. Our ECMP 455 prof Dean Shareski has an amazing wiki that explains in understandable english what social software is and how to use it. Through my complied list of RSS feeds (that seems to grow everyday through the serendipity of the world wide web), that I created using Google Reader, I learned soo much. Everytime I read someone's post, I learned something new that enriched my pedagogy. Whether it was compiling useful links for future resources, such as in this post or reading suggestions from other educators, like this one. The shared learning through blogging and RSS feeds is endless, and the best thing is, it is right at our fingertips for the taking! So...when I am a teacher I will use blogging and my RSS reeds to share my ideas and continually learn from others.
Digital Stroytelling , we learned in the class, is an amazing technological tool for teachers to use. It is a great way for emergent learners to make literacy connections, and for learners who have already make that connection, share their thoughts and stories using a tool that can be made relevant to their own lives. Digital Storytelling is an excellent tool to integrate into almost any subject in a fun and exciting way. So...when I am a teacher I will use Digital Storytelling in my classroom.
Before this class, I had heard of wiki's and had a general idea of what they were. Now, after reading Dean's wiki, watching Mark Wagner's Wiki While You Work presentation, and taking part in a collaborative wiki project myself, I definitely have a handle on what an effective tool wiki's can be in the classroom. Most importantly, I saw through Kathy Cassidy and her classroom's use of wiki's just how poewrful they can be for emergent learner's. So...when I am a teacher, I will use wiki's in my classroom.
Digital Citizenship is an up and rising issue in the world wide web. Our class watched this video, which pretty much sums digital citizenship up.
So...when I am teacher, I will instill in my learners digital citizenship. I also found this site that I hope will help my learners.
So to sum things up, when I am a teacher...I will integrate technology into every aspect of my classroom. I also believe that they physical space of the classroom is very important and I am hoping to learn from Clarence Fisher inregards to his post Starting Over, how I should be setting up my classroom for Web 2.0 learning.
I love it when I finish a university Education class and feel as if the learning is relevant to making me become an effective teacher. ECMP 455 definitely was, and I believe that when I am a teacher, I will be a more effective one, not only because of the learning that took place in the 7 weeks, but because I was introduced to how to access a whole world of learning right at my fingertips!
Thanks Dean!!!

Some Tips

I came across this post on one of my RSS feeds. Some great ideas and information on what to do when you have limited technology access in the classroom. Oh...silly me! I just realized it is from one of our fellow classmates!

My First Wiki Expereince

For my ECMP 455 major class assignment, I have chosen to create a wiki collaboratively with a fellow classmate. Wikipedia describes wikis as, [a collaborative webiste that can be edited by anyone who has access to it]. Before this class, I knew of Wiki's, but didn't really understand how I would benefit using one as a student or even more importantly as a future teacher. Now, as I have been working on ours and viewing others, I am learning how powerful a learning tool they are.
A fellow classmate made two Wiki's for his university classes, and I think they are an amazing way to put information together, as well as store for future use. After spending time on my ECMP prof's wiki , and learning some background on the "how-to's", I have found creating this wiki not quite as hard as I thought it may be. We are using Wikispaces for our wiki and have chosen to create one for Early Childhood Education based on the Evergreen Curriculum. Wikispaces is very user friendly and has many help options. The only problem we have had (so far!) is the web pages were not showing up on the page...Dean offered the solution of deleting the periods we had after each site-it worked, and all is good! We are almost done, and I am impressed with what we have acomplished! Good work Ronda.
Here is the link to our ECE for Teachers Wiki.

Face to Face Elluminate Session

Tonight our ECMP 455 class took part in a face to face session with Elluminate. After some technical difficulty, we were on our way to some useful learning.
I always find it enthralling when our professor Dean Shareski invites guest speakers from all over North America to join in on our class. What a social network he has with so many educators. Some of my most useful learning I have acquired has been from reading the blogs written by these people. There is so much knowledge out there for the taking.
Our first guest speaker was Anne Davis. Anne talked to us about the invisible web and how to perform a google search using searchable databases. Next David Jakes spoke to us about del.icio.us and the benefits of tagging and next Alan Levine gave us the low down on Twitter (which I still don't quite have my head wrapped around, yet!).
In a previous blog from November 24, 2006, I wrote about the importance and benefits of face to face learning versus online. I still believe that there are definitely pros and cons for both styles of learning, but am somewhat partial to the personal connections one can make when they meet with someone. For me, making the personal connections makes the learning more connected to me (I hope that makes sense!).
Anyways, it was a great learning session. Thanks Dean for making it happen for us!

To Brighten Your Day!

I came across this clip on You Tube and wanted to brighten everyone's day!

Parental Consent for Social Networking?

In my previous post, I wrote about how dangerous it may be for a young person to post an invitation to a party on a social netwoking site such as Facebook. Situations like these are a reality, and there is so much more...
I came across a blog that was talking about the fact that North Carolina was trying to pass Senate bill 132 that would restrict and reduce children's access to social networks without parental consent. I cut and pasted this paragraph from the Bill:
[Social networking sites are the new playground for predators. As of July, 2007,
MySpace has found more than 29,000 registered sex offenders on its site, four
times more than its original estimate. That number includes just the predators
who signed up using their real names, and not the ones who failed to register or
used fake names, or who haven’t been convicted.]
This is really scarry stuff!!! I think that passing a Bill would be a step in the right direction although there are many, many loop holes that one can capitalize on when they are in the world wide web to get around a Bill such as this.
As a parent and a future educator, I believe that it will be up to us to educate our children on the dangers and then follow up constantly to ensure that they are using technology safely.

Should I Social Network?

Social Networking...what is it exactly?
If you google the term, you will find over 396,000,000 results! Wow, that's a lot. The first result is from Wikipedia in which it describes social networking as social structure where individuals and organizations can be tied to each other. Sounds like a great idea!
Then some of the results that follow are Friendster, Zooped, and Ning. All social networks that are trying to connect people whehter you went to school together, worked together (Ning is a social network for workers in the emergency services field), or are simply trying to connect with others through the world wide web. Almost sounds too good to be true. Here is a site that helps you build your own social network.
In our ECMP 455 class this week, we are to blog about how we view our own digital life in terms of public vs. private. This blog written by a PHd canidate at the University of California does a great job of explaining exactly what the public and private spheres in the world wide web encompass.
This week a friend of mine put an invitation on Facebook for her house warming party. If you think about it, instead of making 45 phone calls in this ever so busy world we live in, she did what could have taken her hours to do in about 5 minutes! Now that's making technology work for you. In this blog I was reading, the writer who was hesitant on joining Facebook, realized that it does have it's advantages. On the "flip-side" of this, if a young person put an invitation to a party on Facebook, things could get out of hand very easily.
So in answering the question should I social network and what does this mean to my private life? I believe that for myself, it comes down to common sense. I do not and would not post a picture or blog that could potentially harm me. Now I know that pretty much that may only happen in a "perfect world". As Dean said in our last class, when pictures are posted, the viewer does not always know the context of the picture. This is very true and perhaps one of the reason why I sometimes ignore or decline friend requests and avoid social networks such as The Social Networking Weblog.
Once you begin to social network, you make your private life available at the touch of a finger!