ipods in instruction

USATODAY.com - iPods now double as study aids

The first websites i looked up were reports that Duke University has been doing on ipods. Duke University was one of the first colleges to experiment with incorporating ipods into their classes and studies. After reading up on the experiment i thought that the use of ipods to help with classes sounded very beneficial. After enrolling into the classes at Duke ipods are distributed to everyone and if they pass the course they get to keep the ipod as an incentive. With the ipods they can listen to lectures. This is especially good for those who have to miss a class so they won't get behind and students can now study just walking down the street at any time. I know i learn better by listening to something than i would reading something. This would be very beneficial to me because i could soak up the information easier and more quickly. Duke also used ipods in doing group projects where they turned in an mp3 instead of a paper. This worked very well with group and individual work. This use of ipods also made the students think about technology and all the different things that they could use them for in their projects and studying. Overall the program worked very well and got the students more excited about the class and the work they were doing. The initiative to be able to keep the ipods if they passed the course also helped I'm sure.

I have also found some more sites that showed ipods being used in K-12 classrooms and not just in college classrooms. Some schools i have found are using ipods as their books because ipods can hold everything their books can and ipods are not so heavy. Also students can use their ipods instead of going to the library because everything from the library can be stored in an ipod. Schools can now use ipods for almost everything in a classroom from reading, projects, discussions, and much more. Students still attend class, but the ipod is a very good tool for studying and using for projects. It also incorporates technology into learning, which is very good for students to start learning because technology is the future.I found a school that is using ipods with younger students even as young as elementary school. Jamestown Elementary School uses ipods with research papers that they do for grades in their classroom. They do all the regular research, their papers, and everything like they normally would and then they present it to the world including other students, their parents, and anyone else who wants to watch the presentation in a podcast via the ipod. This makes the kids more excited about doing their assignment because they get to use an ipod, which most younger people love and they get to share their work and be proud of what they did. I really think the idea of using ipods in a classroom is a great idea and wonderful way to take learning into the next century with technology.

YouTube - News Report - iPods for Education

My Presentation

Dr. Christie's Constructivist Learning Resource

Dr. Christie has very interesting views and thoughts about learning and teaching. I looked through her site and was really inspired by her last lecture that she held. She talked about how her family inspired her to do all of the work she has done over the years. How because she stresses being proactive and self-reliant in turn made her a better teacher. She was taught to learn from life experiences and all the people that cross her path. She also talks alot about integrity, putting her energy into what she wanted to do, and just having fun. She uses all this in her teaching which is a very effective method i think.

I was very interested in Dr. Christie's learning theory constructivist. The theory makes students more partners in learning than teacher/student learning. The teacher and student work together to learn and collaborate ideas. This makes students want to be more involved and try harder. It makes them involved in the process of learning and makes thinks more creative opening doors for the imagination. Dr. Christie also stresses using technology to help with teaching, but not too overuse technology where it is teaching. Dr. Christie's ideas are very good and i am sure she was a great teacher. I think that if students think they are involved and that a teacher needs their help to do a process than it would make students strive more to learn and help, especially because it is making learning more social than book work. Students who use their creativity and hands on methods in learning usually learn and retain more information. Her views would definitely help me in a classroom in the future. She has the theory to make students feel useful, let them use their creativity, and teach them to be self-reliant. Putting all these thinks in a classroom with a little technology to help out and their is no way it couldn't be a useful method to use.

Wikipedia Can't Be Trusted!!

I read all the articles about Wikipedia from the NPR and Wired and i was really shocked. I knew that when i was in high school all my teachers always said not to use Wikipedia, but i never knew why. I always just stayed away from the site because my teachers always made it sound like the devil or something. Now i know why they didn't want me to use Wikipedia for sources. I mean anyone could just go on the site and put whatever they wanted.I thought it was kind of funny that all the companies are changing all the negative things written about them. I kind of wish there was something written about me on Wikipedia so i could go in and edit it. The only difference between me and these major corporations is that i would go use someone else's computer so it wouldn't get traced back to me. You would think that if a corporation was going to change public documents that they would at least be smart enough to go to a computer that would not get traced back to them. I am glad that Virgil Griffith made that scanner to catch all these companies trying to false advertise to the public. I know now not to trust anything that Wikipedia says. I think if i get bored one day i might just go on there and change all kinds of things. Its definetely a thought, anyways.

April 2007-Blogging 1984-with Parents

I was very interested in the blog about the project the girls did on 1984. I thought that if Mr. Fisch did a blog about someone else's work being good that it was worth checking out. When i began reading Fisch's thoughts on the girls' blog i had no clue anything about the commercial or the book 1984. I really looked through this blog thoroughly and all the links to find out what they were talking about. I watched the commercial and the spoof with Hillary, which i thought was disrespectful, especially seeing Obama's name at the end on the credits. Anyways after i got done searching through Fisch's blog i then searched Maura and Anne's blogs and then googled the book 1984 to find out what the book was about. After all this research i finally had a full understanding of the project like the students and the parents in the class did.

This was a very interesting way of getting everyone involved in the book 1984. It definitely got the students thinking and probably inspired them to read the book with their parents instead of looking up spark notes before the due date. I learned alot about history and 1984 just by this blog and finding out what 1984 was about. I am very against a government being in complete power, which was what the book 1984 was about. The commercial looked very controversial and to make a spoof of Hillary Clinton being the dictator and trying to rule the country was ridiculous i thought. This kind of thing really gets people thinking and the whole idea of the book 1984 blew my mind and was almost kind of scary and to say that if Hillary was elected it would be like the book is preposterous to me. No one can take over that much in the U.S. The idea of that is a bit extreme to me. I am glad i read this blog though, because i did not know about any of this. After reading it and doing some research on the book i feel a little more up to date in history and politics, being that i never had to read this in high school. From what i read this was a very controversial subject and book. I wish i had been made to read 1984 in high school and do a project like the blog Anne and Maura did. I think i would have really benefited from projects such as these.

Is It Ok To Be A Technologically Illiterate Teacher?

I agree with everything that Karl Fisch said in his blog. No wonder he won an award for the most influential blog in 2007. We live in a world of technology and who do we expect to teach us? We expect teachers to teach, of course. What would happen if a teacher whose job it is to teach didn't know what they were doing? In this scenario a student would end up by-passing a student. Mr. Fisch is right in it being embarrassing to be technology illiterate. Imagine being a teacher and your students knowing more than you, the authority in the classroom would go right out the window. Students have to learn technology and it be applied in their learning for the future.

Technology and computers are how everything is starting to work and by the time the students of the class of 2020 graduate everything will be based off technology. If teachers aren't familiar and teaching technology how are students expected to learn it and use it for the future? Teachers who don't know and are unwilling to learn the essentials of technology should be fired. There is no doubt about it in my mind. If you don't fulfill the requirements of the job then you are gone. Not knowing how to us a computer is really like not knowing how to read a few years ago like Fisch said. Being illiterate at anything no matter what it is should be embarrassing. Especially an educator having to say they don't know how to do something, especially something that almost every student knows. Teachers should keep up with the times and teachings before their students by-pass them on learning and they are left behind.

International School blogging

E3
The name of the blog i found was E3. It is a classroom blog of sixth graders in Tauranga, New Zealand. In their class blog they did many things. First they had an art day where all the children painted and they showed all of the students' art in a slide show on the blog. They had a math game, kind of like a puzzle on their, which probably encourages the students to want to do their math work. Their was a blogger's prayer on the page, which i thought was interesting. Everyone knows how dangerous communicating on the internet can be and this is just a prayer to help and probably make people realize they must be careful. The blog had a step by step experiment about electromagnet done by a student name Pete and even a speech semifinalist video where everyone could voice their opinions about things she could work on. They have a very gross looking blue tongue lizard in their classroom they put pictures up of, and showed the bake sale where they raised $273.80. This was a very interesting blog, which showed me alot about their classroom and what they do on a daily basis.


Manaia Kindergarten
The next blog i found was Manaia's Kindergarten blog in New Zealand. This blog is almost like show ans tell i thought. The students are so young though, this was probably the best way to set up this blog. The blog shows a picture of a lamb, which followed a student to school one day so all the kids got to play with it. Next a student in the class went on a vacation to Fiji and he brought back pictures and told about his vacation. They showed where they had a pizza making day, which got the parents involved in the class. The class also had a face painting day and a slide show showed their faces and even a slide show showing the frosty day they had at school. The monkey named Ekko that is pictured above is another blog the class made. This monkey is a stuffed animal, which takes turns going home with all the students and it is kind of like a field trip. This is a very good idea to make kids excited about school and opportunities.

K-12 Classroom Blogs

After browsing through school blogs for a while on the wonderful world of the internet i found Mr. C's Class blog. I felt like this was a very extensive blog. This is the fifth grade class blog at Noel's Elementary School in Noel, MO. The blog has everything they do in the classroom on it. It has a photo album of the class and some videos of the class. It showed alot of the experiments they were doing and even had a contest on it for various things in the class. The blog had links to other websites, like the school's website and the library. What i thought was the most interesting in the blog was the students blogs. Each student had to write a blog much like we have to in EDM 310. The posts that the students added to their blog were very interesting. One was about an earthquake in San Francisco, one was about a journey to the center of the earth, and there was another about if they could make a law, what would it be. Also their was a post at the bottom about a girl named Kelsey. She was changing schools and she did a character sketch and they put that on the blog and said they would miss her. If i was Kelsey i would be pretty excited about that, especially because she is having to change schools. I think a blog is very interesting and beneficial to students, especially at a young age.

http://mrcsclassblog.blogspot.com/

This blog i found is Mrs. Elliott's Fourth Grade Beach Party. This blog is a little different this Mr.C'S blog. Mrs. Elliott doesn't have the students add to the blog, but it is more for the students and their enjoyment. Her blog has pictures of all their field trips or adventures as she calls them. She has lots of games and fun stuff on her blog. She has different stuff she wants them to learn and read on the blog. It looks like it probably gets the parents involved in the students learning also. The blog showed the students experiment they performed called 'Need for Speed." It showed pictures of it being performed, where the idea came from, and all the steps to perform the experiment. This blog is probably really fun for the students to get on and do stuff.There is a puzzle maker students can play with and also a reading club on their. This is also good for parents because they can do this with their children and also seem what their kids are doing while they are at school. This blog looks like alot of fun and i wish this was around when i was younger.

http://teachers.emints.org/FY06/elliottl/