Blog #8: e-Reader Possibilities

My mom recently purchased an iPad.  She is very tech savvy and media conscious and is always up on her current events.  She, however, rarely sits down to read traditional, long format books and in large part because she is a multi-task oriented person.  She will have her solitaire game in one hand, her Smartphone in her other, while she is reading a magazine.  To ask her to sit down and actually read a book for leisure and non-school related task is like asking a fish to swim/live without water.  However, now with her iPad and her ability to download a book to it and interact with her book, she read 3 books while on vacation for a week.  I am not sure if my mom has read 3 books in 10 years.  I share this to show that if we use e-Readers with our students, we might get them hooked in a totally different way.  In the example of my mom, she wanted to read but didn’t take the time to go look for the book and once she did, it didn’t keep her attention.  I feel like that can be the way with our students sometimes too.  I know if it involves technology, my students are all in and maybe getting them to read things they can interact with or feel like they are using technology to read it, they may actually do the reading we need them to do.  Also, we can ask them to read it away from school and they can pull it up on their Smartphones or tablets and don’t need the hard bound book from class.

Jacki

Spector, J. M., Merrill, M. D., Merrienboer, J. V., Driscoll, M. P. (2008). Handbook of research on educational communications and technology. (3^rd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.
Thorsen, C. (2009). Techtactics: Technology for teachers. (3^rd ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc.

Blog #7: Family and Technology

I have two young daughters and I feel like technology hasn’t made its full impact on our family like other families with older children.  I use my laptop and my Smartphone and I find it difficult to use these tools with an almost 5 year old and my 2 year old.  The demands technology places on a home and its family is just one more piece we have to balance now.  I feel compelled to check my email accounts several times a day, check my text messages as soon as I hear my phone ding, and check all the updates on my Facebook newsfeed just so I can feel like I am in the loop.  With that being said with the growth of my family and our busy schedules, technology helps keep us to be on time and in the right place and keeps us connected when we spend time apart.  I can use the calendar on my Smartphone to remind me of events we have and where we need to be.  I can use Skype to talk and to see my girls when I am out of town for extended periods without them.  I spend a lot of time texting with my husband since we seem to see so little of each other with our demanding jobs.  Technology helps me feel connected when I am away and when we can’t be physically together as a family.

Spector, J. M., Merrill, M. D., Merrienboer, J. V., Driscoll, M. P. (2008). Handbook of research on educational communications and technology. (3^rd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.

Thorsen, C. (2009). Techtactics: Technology for teachers. (3^rd ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc.

Blog #6: Social Networking

The perfect balance of social networking for value in your educational pursuit with your students and social networking for everything else will be an equalizer we continue to look for throughout our careers.  I believe that as a professional, we need to try to find a way to keep the personal part of us on one side of the fence and our professional part of us on the other side of the fence and teach our students the proper etiquette for both, potentially using our own ventures as examples for them.  That isn’t to say that sometimes they can’t overlap but teaching high school kids, I know I don’t need them seeing every status update I have on Facebook or my beach vacation photos that I loaded so my cousin in Texas can see my babies at the beach.  In my Canton Professional Educators Association handbook, they strongly discourage us in having a Facebook page along with discouraging us to participate in social networking in the mainstream sense.  I can’t say I agree with that approach.  The ODE Communication and Arts representative helps us network in our state with other CTE teachers and she keeps us up to date on Ohio changes in education and array of lots of other tidbits.  She encourages us to communicate via social network sites and in fact, last week, she shared a link to a great article for us and asked one of my colleagues to post it on his Facebook page since it has over 1100 friends for more to read it.  The power of social networking is worth harnessing and educating ourselves and others on how to properly use it in the given circumstances and how to utilize that power rather than shy away from it.

Spector, J. M., Merrill, M. D., Merrienboer, J. V., Driscoll, M. P. (2008). Handbook of research on educational communications and technology. (3^rd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.

Thorsen, C. (2009). Techtactics: Technology for teachers. (3^rd ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc.

Blog #5: Synchronous vs. Asynchronous

I have a dominant enough personality that whether I am in an asynchronous environment, where I can go at my own pace and do things on my own, or in a synchronous environment, where I am blended with others virtually in the same time and space, I can make the most of the situation.  When I started my pursuit of my Master’s Degree from Liberty, I wasn’t completely convinced that an asynchronous environment was for me.  I am a social person that enjoys the real-time feedback and “live” people to have intellectual rhetoric during our time together.  The synchronous environment can provide more of an immediate interaction and feeds my need for social contact with likeminded professionals. 

After spending over a year taking courses online, I have realized that I am balanced enough and have come to enjoy the parts of distance learning that opt out of the live human contact.  I have now become accustomed to working at my own pace now and searching for feedback via social media, scholarly journals, and internet resources rather than the other professionals in my course. I feel like I am now even more comfortable in that type of work environment and question if I would be able to go full force back to learning without my own parameters and my own pace that the asynchronous environment affords me. 

Guide to Online Learning. Synchronous vs. asynchronous classes.  http://www.elearners.com/guide/how-online-learning-works/synchronous-vs-asynchronous-delivery/ Retrieved June 14, 2012.

Spector, J. M., Merrill, M. D., Merrienboer, J. V., Driscoll, M. P. (2008). Handbook of research on educational communications and technology. (3^rd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.

Thorsen, C. (2009). Techtactics: Technology for teachers. (3^rd ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc.

Blog #4: Web Based Resources

I find that using the web to explore and reinforce my content is relatively easy and that web based resources are an integral part of the everyday needs of my students and my curriculum. My students love YouTube and we utilize it as a part of the content of one of our Channel 11 shows “School of Thought”. This show dedicates an entire segment to 4 or 5 videos based on that week’s theme and the kids get to pick the videos with an adult producer approval of course. As for my own resources, I use a couple of sites that help me create things for my students and allow me to collaborate with other educators. http://www.edutopia.org/ is a site that was recommended by my first administrator and has an array of useful reinforcements for the new teacher or the teacher looking to keep the classroom applicable to his generation of the student population. I use http://www.eschoolnews.com/ specifically for technological needs in my classroom an dlatest advancements for the classroom. I get a newsletter from http://www.einstruction.com/ and it is a good starting place when I am looking for information or additional resources in my classroom or my own learning outside of the classroom. I do believe I could go on and on for day on web based resources bu I will end with http://rubistar.4teachers.org/. I find that using rubrics with my students is the best way for them to know what they are getting into with my assignments and for me to accurately and fairly assess their work.

Spector, J. M., Merrill, M. D., Merrienboer, J. V., Driscoll, M. P. (2008). Handbook of research on educational communications and technology. (3^rd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.

Thorsen, C. (2009). Techtactics: Technology for teachers. (3^rd ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc.

Blog #3: My own learning with presentations

As a learner, I know I am a visual learner with a splash of kinesthetic.  I know that I am in no way an auditory learner.  I find that I can tend to tailor my lessons for visual learners because I am so dominant in that area.  PowerPoint presentations can tend to favor a visual learner in general so when we talk about software for presentations the hardest part can be making it hands-on and appealing to an auditory learner or a kinesthetic learner.  I also find that in most of my college classes as an undergraduate and as at the graduate level that I would have professors read to me off of their PowerPoint slides.  I would become more and more frustrated as the presentation when on that they weren’t sharing anything with me that wasn’t already there for me to read for myself without their help.  As I work with my students I try to think in terms of if I was sitting there listening to myself and would it be as thought provoking and powerful as I intended and would it include things that were authentic for my audience to walk away with and know aside from just the information on the slides themselves?

Spector, J. M., Merrill, M. D., Merrienboer, J. V., Driscoll, M. P. (2008). Handbook of research on educational communications and technology. (3^rd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.

Thorsen, C. (2009). Techtactics: Technology for teachers. (3^rd ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc.

Blog #2 EDUC 630: Online Communities

My first experience in an online community was when I signed up for the babycenter.com newsletter and began to chart my first pregnancy and participating in their blogs.  Through that I was able to connect with other moms and get sound advice when I would freak out over the little things.  I continued with MySpace and then Facebook so I could connect with friends and family.  Most of my online community involvement revolved around the social aspect of it and for simple information and feedback.  Throughout my professional career I have utilized things like SchoolTube and TeacherTube for instruction and lessons and professional exemplars.  In those cases I am able to connect with other professionals and make sure my students are equal in regards to the rigor and standards of others product development.  I believe that my students and I can really benefit from knowing what others are doing in our field and online communities offer that benefit to us and others seeking the connectedness offered by those communities.

Spector, J. M., Merrill, M. D., Merrienboer, J. V., Driscoll, M. P. (2008). Handbook of research on educational communications and technology. (3^rd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.

Thorsen, C. (2009). Techtactics: Technology for teachers. (3^rd ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc.