Video Blog Post about Research Plan for Special Education and Technology

This is my video blog post about my research plan for Special Education and Technology

https://vimeo.com/72166279

Wiki Reflections for Week 6

My thoughts about the wiki.  I chose PBworks as the place that we would work on our blog after doing some research that said that it would serve our needs of having a place to post our work and share it with others.

Working on the wiki contributes to my learning because it gives me a place to have all of my work in one central location. This allows me to organize my thoughts and to have my research at my fingertips. I tend to collect more data than necessary when working on assignments and having a wiki gives me a repository for all of my research.

Working on the wiki helps me to have more of an understanding about our subject in this class which is Special education.  I enjoy having a place that I can write about the subject and most importantly I enjoy just being able to find articles and place them in the wiki for later.
The wiki has contributed to my ability to perform in my career because it has taught me more organizational skills that I can use in my job as a classroom teacher and even in working with other aspects of my job.
The wiki contributed to my sense of reciprocity and cooperation among students in my class because they would deposit data into the wiki and I would be able to see what direction they were going in.  This would then guide me down the right path rather than when you work by yourself you are not really sure if you understand or not. You also can see how much your teammates have contributed and you want to make sure that you are contributing the same amount if not more so that the division of labor is fair.

Overall having a wiki space has been a good experience and I will use one in the future.

Week 6

While working on your Wiki Literature Review, develop a reflective narrative as a Word document about 3 times that you worked on the wiki. You should reflect on the first time you used the wiki, the last time you used the wiki, and time in between.  Each narrative should be approximately 200–300 words. 

Use the following questions to guide your entries:

• What was my contribution?
• How did working on the wiki contribute to or to hinder my learning or knowledge development?
• How did working on the wiki contribute to or to hinder my attitude toward the subject matter?
• How did working on the wiki contribute to or hinder my ability to perform in my future career (i.e. skill development)?
• How did working on the wiki contribute or hinder my sense of reciprocity and cooperation among students in my class?  

You may visit your peers' blogs and comment on your peers' entries; however, it is not required for this blog.

Submission Criteria: Your blog entry is due by 11:59 p.m. (ET) on Sunday, submitted via your blog.


My thoughts about the wiki.  I chose PBworks as the place that we would work on our blog after doing some research that said that it would serve our needs of having a place to post our work and share it with others.

Working on the wiki contributes to my learning because it gives me a place to have all of my work in one central location. This allows me to organize my thoughts and to have my research at my fingertips. I tend to collect more data than necessary when working on assignments and having a wiki gives me a repository for all of my research.

Working on the wiki helps me to have more of an understanding about our subject in this class which is Special education.  I enjoy having a place that I can write about the subject and most importantly I enjoy just being able to find articles and place them in the wiki for later.
The wiki has contributed to my ability to perform in my career because it has taught me more organizational skills that I can use in my job as a classroom teacher and even in working with other aspects of my job.
The wiki contributed to my sense of reciprocity and cooperation among students in my class because they would deposit data into the wiki and I would be able to see what direction they were going in.  This would then guide me down the right path rather than when you work by yourself you are not really sure if you understand or not. You also can see how much your teammates have contributed and you want to make sure that you are contributing the same amount if not more so that the division of labor is fair.

Overall having a wiki space has been a good experience and I will use one in the future.

EDUC 639 Week 5 Muddiest Blog Post

The muddy points that I have run into several times would be about electronic content and plagiarism. I watched the video and the explanation was there and it is important to understand the concepts but it can be confusing.  In today's age when so many are resource junkies and we are researching online more and more it is important to learn how to negotiate the online world.  It is important to know what content is important and how to give proper credit when you use it. There are many different ways to gather resources and then to use them in your classroom and here in our class but the issue of plagiarism is more than just did you copy someone else's work and not give them credit.

You would be guilty of plagiarism if you copy a person's intellectual ideas as well.  There are electronic programs that are designed to uncover plagiarism but these programs can not determine the intent of the student.  While being ignorant and not understanding how plagiarism works are not good excuses this can actually be the reason why some students are accused of doing it.

Since I am a classroom teacher and a Christian I think that conducting myself and holding my students to high academic standards is important.  I want to teach students how to behave in the right way as often as possible.  I want to know how to avoid certain pitfalls such as having my work confused with someone else's or not quoting a resource properly which, if detected, can make me feel like I was doing something intentionally dishonest.  I want to learn how to cite my sources properly and when it is necessary to cite the source and give proper credit to the source.

EDUC639 Week 3 Most Important Theory Blog

Hello there,

What a week, I have been so lost but I think I have finally figured out what I was missing, I have printed out all of the assignments and the Assignment Appendix and now I think I have my roadmap to success in the class.

Now about this important theory.  I think the theory of putting technology in every school is somewhat shortsighted. I say this because adding technology to schools is one thing but maintaining them, training the teachers and students to use the technology effectively is a completely different animal.  The cost alone is prohibitive as many school districts have found and add to this the time commitment that it takes to bring a faculty member up to par has become prohibitive as well.

Technology in schools is important because the proverbial horse is already out of the barn.  If you walk down any street you will see people on their cellphone.  We don't have a standard for these phones yet and those who can afford the latest and greatest are ahead of the curve but even grandmas and grandpas at least have a phone that they can make a call and even get pictures of their grandkids on.  Add to this the iPad revolution and you see that technology is moving very fast and schools have had to integrate the technology into their curriculum as a way of reaching their students.

As I read more and more about things like access, who has the technology and the security threats that having our lives online I can't say that my thoughts were necessarily changed but I am now even more cautious of the electronic footprint that I am leaving for the world to view.

I am thinking about access to technology all the time and in the future I will research the different ways that other institutions are managing the technology. How are we making sure that every student has a level technology playing field?  What part will schools play in ensuring access to the Internet in even the most poor urban and rural communities?  I've been working with technology for 15 years and in that time I have seen my students, who come from predominately affluent homes go from only having one computer in the home to everyone having some type of device that they could personally log in to and gain access to online resources.  That is my reality but not the reality of the majority of students in this country and so my research will keep an eye on how those people will eventually have access.

The other day I went to Brooklyn NY for a book signing event and one of the women that I met up with has an old school flip phone and her friend actually doesn't even own a phone.  I told that story to my 17 year old daughter who has had a phone since 6th grade and she asked, how the woman communicates. I laughed. It is still possible to live in this world without a cellphone or a television or the Internet but it is certainly becoming increasingly more abnormal to do so I think.

·         Brown, A.H., Green, T.D., and  Robinson, L.K. (2010). Security vs. access.  Oregon: ISTE. ISBN 9781564842640. (K-12)

Week 1 response to Lauretta

Here is the link to my week 1 intro from Lauretta Turner's word gaming...

http://youtu.be/Majjal-ZGrM

In my response I speak about ways that I am trying to also engage my students but using Lego Mindstorm kits to teach robotics to middle school students.

Week 1 Response to Tori

I was able to record a video response to Tori Millikan

Find my response here:  Response to Tori's word Mobility

Week 2 EDUC 639

Let me first say that this has been a tough start to this course. It is my first time having two classes at the same time and now I know why I did not not it before, because I get too confused. I have a very busy schedule and it is important that I stay organized and up to date with my deadlines and I have not been able to manage that well yet.  The prayer is that I will get on top of it.

With that being said I would also like to say that I am THRILLED to be in the last classes toward completing my Master's degree requirements from Liberty. It has been very informative and challenging but I've done it and am extremely proud of myself and hope that you all feel the same way about your accomplishments.

Now for this week's blog

Identify and briefly explain the most important issue, trend, or finding in educational technology or distance education that you discovered during your interview. 

The educational technology director that I chose to interview works for a small independent quaker school here in Princeton.  I have had the pleasure of working with Michael D'Amore since June 10 after we attended several of the same tech workshops over the years. Mike would always be there with some great contributions and I would learn a great deal from him and I always wanted to find ways that we could collaborate. This happened this summer when his school advertised for help with breaking down the school computers to prepare the classrooms for summer camp and then setting the machines up again as the summer comes to an end.

I applied for and was offered the job. It's been a lot of fun getting my hands dirty again working with hardware and most importantly working with Mike on a regular basis. Mike knows quite a bit about many things and most importantly about technology. He has worked in industry and now in the independent school system.

When talking to Mike about the trends and findings in educational technology we talk a lot about access and mobility.  The key to integration of technology into education is to meet the needs of those who we want to use it.  We have to make sure at the teachers have access to the Internet and to the hardware, whether it is iPad or desktops or laptops, the platform is not as important as access to the technology is. Once the teachers have access it is equally important that they are trained. We have to make time to help the teacher who is an expert in their field of teaching gets comfortable with integrating technology into that same field. They have to be motivated, encouraged and supported.

Did it change your views or ideas about educational technology or distance education?  Through our interview I can not say that my views or ideas necessarily changed, well yes maybe they did change because I went to Mike's school expecting it to be set up very similar to mine since we are within 10 miles of each other in the same affluent town of Princeton NJ.  However what I discovered is that at a Friends school technology is not seen as a major factor in the education of young people.  Just like grades are not really that important, they have a different approach to education and because of that different approach Mike has to introduce technology in a different way.  They also do not put the funding behind technology as we do at the school where I teach for obvious reasons.

How is this point relevant to you and what you plan to do after graduation?  

The differences between the way my school and Mike's school view technology and the administrative support that is offered to the program definitely changes the way that I will conduct my job search or interact with my school's administration after graduation.  I have already had several meetings with my school's IT director about the things that I have learned in this graduate program and now have added my experience at the quaker school to the mix as well. We are clearly in the forefront in terms of the ways that we deal with technology at our school. We are rolling out an iPad program through the whole 6-8 grade middle school and then to the 9-10 graders in the upper school and the teachers will all have iPads in the Fall along with their MacBook Pro laptops that the school issues and support.  At Mike's school although the teachers are required to write their assessments for their students electronically, the school does not issue the teachers laptops.  They all have desktop computers that they have in their classrooms and that they can log in to remotely from home but this is not as convenient as how we do it in our school.  The quaker school also doesn't have the budget to support the types of initiatives that my school does and after graduation if I decide to look for another school to work at I now know that I will have to prioritize.

Access EDUC639

Access Intro

Hello everyone

The word that I chose is Access.  While not everyone has the same device or Internet access, we are growing faster and moving toward providing access for everyone especially here in the U.S.

I'm LeRhonda Greats and I teach middle school computer classes and provide tech support for faculty at a private boarding school in Princeton New Jersey. I have 2 children, a son who is a Liberty University student and lives there in Lynchburg working on his undergraduate degree in Pastoral Leadership and a daughter who will start her senior year in the fall!  I have been living on campus with my daughter since 2007 when my son first ventured off to college at Tuskegee University. I have taught at my school since 1998.

I look forward to working with you all
LeRhonda

Week 6 blog EDUC 638 June 23 Distance Learning

In 2013, the technology within educational institutions has become almost mandatory.  Schools are grappling with the different ways that they growing technical needs are and different ways to both use the technology and how it can be paid for.  The ultimate goal is to be sure that students have access to education.

In chapter 9, Picciano writes about distance learning and defines it as an educational process in which the teacher and students are physically separated (Picciano, 2011).  The challenge of connecting the student and teacher is a big problem in cases where the student doesn't have the financial ability to access the Internet or the equipment to connect to their teacher.  There are various ways that the lessons can be disseminated include broadcast television, two-way videoconferencing and asynchronous learning networks.

While many higher education institutions have embraced distance learning the k-12 schools are facing a more difficult task of integrating technology and also determining how distance education can be used with the younger students. (www.k12.com) There are some schools that have developed distance learning programs and students who may be interested in an accelerated learning experience also enjoy learning at home. There are students who have been bullied as well who find that they need to take time away from school or students who have trouble in other social ways interacting with students or teachers who can benefit from online education.

Distance learning can allow students to have access to teachers and experiences that they would not be able to see from their schools.  Schools who decide to enter into the realm of providing distance education to students should be sure to plan for the different hardware and software needs.

References

Picciano, A. (2011). Educational Leadership and Planning for Technology (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River: Pearson.

http://www.k12.com/schools-programs/online-public-schools#.UcfDCz5gbFw

EDUC 638 June 8, 2013 Week 4 Interview with School Technology Leader

This week's assignment was exciting to work on. Since I work in the technology field at my school and I work very closely with our Director of Technology having the opportunity to reflect on the work that we do together was very helpful.  Especially as we close out another school year.

When I was developing my questions for our school's Director of Technology I was thinking about the various changes that we have gone through over the past 2 years.  While I have been at our school for the past 15 years working in the computer science area, teaching classes and offering tech support for faculty and staff our Director of Technology was hired 2 years ago.

Jim H. came to our school from another independent school in Pennsylvania where he had worked as the Assistant Director of Technology.  When he was hired he quickly realized that there were many areas that needed his immediate attention in order to resolve many of the 'customer' complaints. The students complained about the slow wifi connection and since our school is a boarding school and many of our boarders come from outside of the US having a solid Internet connection is very important. With the advance of technology and more and more users becoming involved in purchasing their own devices to allow them Internet access, Jim knew that this was a problem that needed to be resolved very quickly.

Our technology team was somewhat disjointed and not meeting the support needs of our school either, we were spread very thin and had too many complaints for our small staff to handle so Jim quickly put a plan in motion to change our computer platform from PC to Mac.  We switched our email from Microsoft Outlook to Gmail and when our division heads wanted to move our students to iPads Jim made the decision to have the students purchase them and have the parents be responsible for their repairs.  His other important improvement was to hire a consultant to evaluate our wifi network and move quickly to add additional access points throughout campus. During this time we also introduced Schoology, a learning management system, to improve communication between students, teachers and parents. This is an online system that works and looks similar to Facebook.

These changes improved our service on campus tremendously because now email worked, wifi is now stable and our computers don't have virus problems as they had in the past.  Jim is a manager who understands the challenges of working with technology in an educational environment and what good technical support looks like.

The Hall textbook speaks to a Technology Directors measurements of success and how using technology can improve teaching and learning.  Teachers and students need to have technology that works first then they have to learn to use it properly.  Under the guidance of our Director of Technology, our school is certainly on the right track.

References

Hall, D. (2008). The Technology Director’s Guide to Leadership . Eugene: ISTE.

Picciano, A. (2011). Educational Leadership and Planning for Technology (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River: Pearson.

Week 2 EDUC 638

As I read the text I thought about the early days of my job at the private boarding school where I work.  When I was hired we were using MacIntosh G3 desktop computers in the computer labs and our library had PC machines.  Over the course of about 3 years there was a push from both our IT department who wanted to streamline things a bit more and the parents of our students who often wondered why we were still using MAC computers when their office used PC.  So we made the decision to switch and become an all PC school.  Around this same time the expectations that teachers would integrate technology into their courses posed a problem for our teachers because they did not all have technology.  The school needed a plan that would work to help solve both challenges.  What we decided to do with the technology dollars that were available was to lease our computers for 3 years, because we would not own them outright we also had enough money in our budget to also lease a laptop for each full-time teacher.

In our text it speaks about comprehensive planning and how schools need to be sure that before they make such a large financial commitment that they take many different factors into account.  I am reminded of the multiple meetings that I attended that involved the IT Director, Chief Financial Officer, Division heads and myself, as the school's Computer Department Chair.  We each brought our own concerns to the table as it related to the switch in technology and the distribution of laptops to the faculty. Questions like was there enough electricity in the buildings to handle more technology, there had been many power surges at the school due to our window air conditioners so we knew that power was in short supply.  We were also in the process of doing some major building and renovations to our school it was decided that additional electricity capacity must be priority.  This demonstrates the level of collaboration that was necessary and we even added our facilities director once the power question was added.

The chapter spoke about a commitment that was necessary to ensure a plan's success.  Our administration had to make the commitment to provide technology support for the computers as well as training for the teachers.  This commitment came in the form of lunchtime learning workshops that the teachers could attend to learn about their machines.  We increased the size of our IT department to a number that allows us to better handle the increased support demands.  One of the IT members was responsible mainly for the network then another was responsible for hardware support problems and printers while my job was to help with technology integration.

The last piece is continuity, our plan began back in 1998 and has grown and gotten better each year and today we are still supporting technology within the classroom and offering technology support for our teachers and staff. We are now fully wireless and over the past couple of months I have had to set up log in passwords for members of our dining hall and support staff so that they can access our on campus communications which are filtered through Gmail.  In order to use the fastest wifi connection they have to have a system log in and password.  It is great that our staff now is involved in technology but it adds another layer of support and assistance necessary to keep our technology and our community up to date with the ever changing world.

References

Picciano, A. G. (2011). Educational leadership and planning for technology. Prentice Hall.

Week 8 blog-Latest Tech Trends

Pick any latest tech trend (ebooks, augmented reality, cloud computing, social networking) and discuss how you feel about it in personal societal use/ educational use as a teacher.  This is your feeling about it.  DOn't go all research on this. :)

Cloud based computing is my favorite.  I am very active with equity and inclusion in my job and life and I find that cloud based computing really is one of those things that helps to level some of the playing field when it comes to technology access.  With Google Apps and Open Office available for free now all a user has to do is gain access to a computer and they are then able to use word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software.  This is great because in the past it was virtually impossible because the software could sometimes be as expensive as a low end computer.

I also love that now we have many options that allow us to save our work to the cloud.  While as a teacher I am working very hard to help my students understand that this should be their first choice for saving, even over the USB drive because when you log in to the cloud and place your data there you are less likely to have the 'cloud' fail to work for you.  In the days when we used floppy disks, they would have formatting problems quite often and then USB drives tended to also get lost or simply left behind somewhere. With the cloud storage such as Dropbox.com or Google Drive you now really have no real excuse for not having your work if you saved it.

eBooks are still not my favorite but I keep trying to stay current with what is happening with them and watching the reactions of the students who are using them to see if they prefer them.  I have heard from both high school students and adults that they prefer the actual physical books where as I think the lower cost of having eBooks certainly makes it an option worth considering.

I have not gotten to the point that I like reading on my iPad vs. a regular book but maybe one day.  As I say, the jury is still out on that one. Another point that I agree with as it related to the eBooks is that it lightens the backpacks and if the books stay so much cheaper, I think as teachers we have to get over our discomfort and promote the new technology to our students who seem to at least not be repulsed by the idea of using eBooks.

Week 7 Blog EDUC 630

Reflect on your own personal use of technology in day to day living . .not education necessarily.  How do you balance the natural demands technology place upon you and your family and the supposed (and realized) benefits they potentially provide?

Oh boy, when I think about my personal use of technology in my day to day living, I tend to be somewhat embarrassed at the number of hours that I actually spend online.  Between school and work and my overall curiosity about what is going on in the world, I am online all the time.  The balance of natural demands of technology and my family is interesting as well.  My son is 23 and lives in Lynchburg, attending Liberty.  He and I almost always only communicate via text and email.  I am not sure where our relationship would be if we did not have technology. I am sure that we would not write to each other…well I guess I actually would have to because that would be the only way for me to get him money, here and there.

My daughter and I text each other quite a bit too even though we live together.  Our schedules are so busy that we don't often have time to keep up with each other so when I need her to know something I will normally send her a text if she is not with me.

I am on Facebook keeping up with friends and the latest information at least 4-5 times a day.  I think most of this is because I have always been a loner and found ways to occupy my time.  This would include writing and reading by myself, with the advancements of technology and having the Internet at my fingertips all the time, I tend to just be online to research various topics all the time.

This is why the online school works for me so well, it allows me to work at my own pace and in my own space.  I am able to log in and get my assignments completed on a pretty consistent basis.  I have to balance my time to make sure that I am working on actual work for class or work rather than being caught up with things that are just interesting to me.  I love to keep up with news and world events and one article leads to another, it's pretty interesting and I am very happy to be involved with technology at a time where the advances are happening so rapidly.

Week 6 Social Networking

Reflect on current social networking technologies and how they might be used for educational purposes.  You can also outline some concerns you have with these technologies.

When I think about the different social networking technologies and how they are being used for educational purposes, I think about our learning management system (LMS) that we use at our school, titled Schoology.  We decided as a school last year that it was time to invest in a program that would allow our entire community to keep up with communication.  Schoology was chosen because it resembles Facebook and as a school we decided that the similarity would ensure that the students would use the program and it has worked. 

Another way that we ensured that students would use Schoology was that the teachers are required to post their daily homework on Schoology.  This means that students who are absent or not paying much attention in class can still have a place that they can access their assignments.  Course syllabii are listed and classroom attendance is kept on Schoology.  Teachers also post the student's grades there.  Each parent is given their own Schoology account that allows them to also have some access to their students progress and assignments.  There are different groups that can be made for communication purposes so if a student is involved in a club and the school newspaper then if they log in to their Schoology account they have one place that all of the information that they need that relates to school is posted right there for them.  Homeroom teachers create groups to keep in touch with students the athletic coaches also form groups in Schoology to remind students of practices and other important events.

The school calendar is posted on Schoology and helps keep our school community in line.  We still have a school website that gives the outside world a look at who we are as a school community but for our internal communications we rely on Schoology.

Once of the drawbacks to Schoology and that we have worked around is that the outside world can not contact our students through this program because it is closed to our school community.  This means that if a college is attempting to contact students that they need a separate email address and there are times that the school would need to communicate with students or faculty and Schoology may not be running so email is the next best thing.  We use Gmail and make sure that each student and faculty member has their own gmail.com account for these purposes when outsiders need to contact us about school business.  The combination of Schoology and Gmail has really worked well and while the students don't all use or check their school email account they do all check in on Schoology.  

Week 5 Synchronous and Asynchronous collaboration

Reflect on your own ability to collaborate in asynchronous and synchronous online environments . .for learning or for professional contexts.


"Synchronous online classes are those that require students and instructors to be online at the same time. Lectures, discussions, and presentations occur at a specific hour. All students must be online at that specific hour in order to participate." (Retrieved from:  http://www.elearners.com/online-education-resources/online-learning/synchronous-vs-asynchronous-classes/)  When I think about collaboration online I think about Google Docs.  When I was introduced to Google Docs, now called Google Drive, it stirred up such excitement within the online educational community because multiple users were able to log into the same document and add comments synchronously.  The Google drive documents allow the users to use the same document while they also are working on only one document rather than every student having their own document.

When I think about synchronous online environments I compare them to regular brick buildings that you have to drive to and be in class together. While you can do synchronous classes online, everyone still must be online at the same time.  Skype and other web conferencing tools allow the students to set up online chat sessions and to speak to each other at the same time from various locations throughout the world.

"Asynchronous classes are just the opposite. Instructors provide materials, lectures, tests, and assignments that can be accessed at any time." (Retrieved from:  http://www.elearners.com/online-education-resources/online-learning/synchronous-vs-asynchronous-classes/)  Asynchronous online environments are like the courses that I'm most familiar with both at Liberty University and University of Phoenix.  These are environments that allow the students to collaborate on projects using things like LiveBinders which allows multiple users to work in the same online environment but when their schedule permits. Blackboard is another tool that can be used for students to keep up with their schoolwork using email and message boards for communicating with each other. Asynchronous collaboration allows the users to leave messages for others and while the students may have to wait on their answers this method of learning can be most helpful to those who would benefit from a more flexible timed learning environment.

Week 4 Educational Web Resources

I love to tell people that I am a 21st Century computer nerd. I love computers and what I can learn using them.  I actually just heard the saddest thing on Friday when I got a text from a fellow tech person who was announcing that due to his recent diagnosis of ALS that he will have to resign his position at his school's technology director.  He also said that the disease has affected his hands so badly that he can not type on his computer and his voice so that the voice recognition software will not work for him either.  I can not imagine losing those two things that I depend on so heavily as a technology specialist and enthusiast.

Now to my resources:  Please reflect on some web-based resources for education . . for living . .  you find useful and why.  Share your secrets here. :)

I have 5 different email accounts.  I have Yahoo! from back in the mid 90's when I first got online, I did let my AOL account go but I kept Yahoo! for my personal email and my Hotmail account for business, when I place orders online and they want an email address I use Hotmail.  Then I got a Gmail account because Google was becoming such a presence and Google Docs was all the buzz in the tech industry, especially in education.  Then last year my job decided to switch to Gmail for it's primary mail service and that means that my work email address is also Gmail.  Last but not least is my Liberty University email account.  I list all of these because I am learning new things with each of these different email accounts. With Yahoo! I belonged to a free Yahoo! Group for my high school reunion that old classmates and I actually used to stay connected for over 10 years.  It is only recently that we all got too busy and have moved on to bigger and better placed on the web and away from each other.  We are the class of '81 so none of this technology was even around when we were in high school.

I also use my email accounts to subscribe to different ListSERV groups so that I can stay current with the latest developments in the Educational Technology field.  Every morning I get new email from Paper.li which publishes "The Arthur Preston Daily", Burlington High School's principal writes a blog, Diigo in Education and Educational Technology Guy who write about things that they have discovered that would be of interest to me in my classroom.   I subscribe Teacher Tip's Newsletter, k12appstech which is a Google Group that Google users can ask questions.

I am a Twitter user as I said before and I use it mostly for professional development. I also signed up for Facebook to keep up with students who I worked with during their years at our school and over the past few years I have used it more to follow others in my line of work or who I meet at conferences, etc. all in the interest of keeping up with what is going on with those who are as passionate about technology as I am.  I don't follow many of the Apple sites surprisingly but that is because although I use many Apple products, I am not really a fan of their cult like mentality.  I love to learn however and am so happy that I have the Internet at my disposal because I am able to find my answers without disturbing people close to me with my question.  The Internet is available 24 hours a day and it is never a bad time to ask whatever question you have.

Although I am working on my Master's at Liberty I find that I do at least twice as much research on my own because I have the web-based tools to do the research with in the privacy of my home or on my own learning device.

Week 3 Presentation Styles

How do you personally view your learning and the use of "presentations" - what works for you as a learner?

A few years ago I ran across a website http://www.learning-styles-online.com/overview/ that helped me discover the type of learner that I am.  I was doing some research for a class and when I discovered this website it really helped me to understand how I like to learn.  I am definitely a person who can be taught things through showing rather than simply giving me verbal instructions. I was not very good at word problems in math class but I could follow a recipe whether it was for sugar cookies or lemon meringue pie.  I did not have problems, I remember in the early 80's I had an old car that my mother gave to me and I had to learn to change my own oil and spark plugs.  My uncle bought me the book Car Repairs for Dummies and I followed along with the pictures in the book with no problem for me it was as easy as any recipe that I had tried.

From the learning styles that are listed on the site, I can say that I am a visual learner who enjoys using my hands to build things and to discover how things work.  I am a very logical person who definitely prefers to work alone or use self-study  to learn.

The Seven Learning Styles

• Visual (spatial):You prefer using pictures, images, and spatial understanding.
• Aural (auditory-musical): You prefer using sound and music.
• Verbal (linguistic): You prefer using words, both in speech and writing.
• Physical (kinesthetic): You prefer using your body, hands and sense of touch.
• Logical (mathematical): You prefer using logic, reasoning and systems.
• Social (interpersonal): You prefer to learn in groups or with other people.
• Solitary (intrapersonal): You prefer to work alone and use self-study.

Fast forward a couple of decades and I am loving technology and what I can do with it.  I like to use videos such as those found on TED Talks, I have used Netflix to find documentary films that I feel will help my students understand different concepts that I am teaching. Often when I am teaching about the history of computers they have never even seen an adding machine or typewriter for that matter so having a presentation, whether it is created in Powerpoint or Keynote it does not matter.  What matters is that the content is clear. Because our students have electronic devices in their hands it is pretty easy to send them to a website to view the images of things that I feel they can not relate to because they have never been exposed to it in their short lives.  My goal in my classes is the help my students think about technology everyday in their everyday lives and to come back into our classroom and show me what they have encountered.  I teach them how to use presentation software by creating a presentation myself that incorporates the various components of the topic into visual and audible content. 

I like to use props also in my classes so that the students that the ability to touch any of the hardware that we are discussing in class.  Hands on learning and electronic presentations via either Powerpoint, Keynote or even HTML websites work best for my personal style of learning.

Week 2 Blog Post

Reflect on your own participation in online communities (where do you go? what do you do? what does your family do?

As I think about my participation in online communities and where I go online, I know that I have a varied collection of communities that I belong to. I participate in Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and even have tried my hand at online dating with Match.com, eHarmony and Black People Meet.com. I am very comfortable meeting people online and while I don't use Linkedin very often, I am a member of the community. I have used Yahoo! Groups to connect with old high school friends and maintained that relationship online for over 10 years until we all sort of grew in different directions and stopped having the time to checkin online. I use Liberty's online community for my classes and at school I am a part of Schoology's online community that connects our students and faculty with parents to share lessons and grades as well as school related social communication.

My son friended me on Facebook but we are not really in the same online circles since he is 23 years old an my daughter deactivates her Facebook page during the school year.

EDUC630 Week 2 Discussion

Communities and online environments
Web 2.0
Learning with communities and online environments.  Taking discussions and collaboration to online environments within the education community.

When I finished high school I attended a traditional four year college. I completed two years and earned an Associate's Degree but I was bored. I did not feel that the education that I was getting applied to my real life at all, I was an electronics major and while I did and still do enjoy fixing things, I never did anything in those classes that held my interest.  I do remember one time using a soldering iron to attach resistors to a motherboard and enjoyed that but the other lectures and lessons were detached from my world of application.  I waited 12 years before I was ready to attend school again and this time I chose a technical school that required hands on lessons starting the very first day of school, we learned how to program computers and read algorithms among other things. I finished 2 more Associate's Degrees at the technical school, after an internship I was hired to a full time, better paying job.

I loved the direct application of the lessons and I enjoyed my professors but since I was an older student and had a family that I was caring for it was tough to attend classes.  This is why as the Internet improved and became more popular and online universities began to offer classes to more citizens, I jumped at the chance to complete my undergraduate degree.  My online classes allowed me to work during the day and take my classes as my schedule permitted.

In 2010 I was introduced to Twitter and while initially I did not believe that I would need to use the #140 character format and I did not think that I would find a direct application to my learning and/or teaching environment I was wrong.  I attended a workshop that demonstrated the various ways that Twitter is being used in professional development. Twitter has an extensive online community of educators from all over the world.  I attended the #140edu conference in New York City and met many educators who meet online, many of them weekly, to discuss topics that relate to education. I met administrators and classroom teachers alike who come together to share their ideas and to learn from one another on Twitter.  I signed up and immediately found a group that worked well for me and met every Tuesday from 7:00pm - 8:00pm and had participants from as far away as Australia.  It was very cool and what I learned could not be taught in a classroom environment because we just live too far away from each other.

Sarah Garland wrote in the HechingerEd blog an article about Twitter and Facebook's impact on professional development in schools.  They write that "Instead of enduring hours-long workshops a few times a year, teachers could reach out to peers on the Internet" (Garland, S., 2012).  Twitter is an online community that brings many different groups together.

The Internet has the ability to bring experts together, today my students and I watched a TEDxSydney talk about robots that gave the students a first hand look at how robots are being used in Australia.  This is a great use of the online communities.

Garland, S. (2012, August 3). Can twitter replace traditional professional development? [Web log post] Retrieved January 24, 2013, from http://hechingered.org/content/can-twitter-replace-traditional-professional-development_5315/.

EDUC630 Week 1 Blog Post

As I think about technology adoption at the independent school that I work in over the 15 years that I have been here I must say that there have always been great intentions.  In 1998 when I got to the school there were 3 computer labs but the teachers did not have their own devices and most of the students only used computers when they came to school.  

Fast forward to 2013 when everyone has some sort of device in their hand that they use almost every waking hour of every day.  Schools have to keep up with this phenomenon and have had to upgrade their networks to accommodate more traffic and the different ways that technology is being used.  Our school is a boarding school so the technology literally is working around the clock, in my early years at the school we had an IT director who did not support our boarding program. He would go home a 5pm and if the network experienced problems in the evenings then he felt that we could wait until morning. Once he was gone and we hired someone who understood how important it is to have 24/7 access to the network.  

Three years ago we changed all of our technology from PC to MAC and now we are about 90% Apple based products.  We still support some PC platforms if students have them but any equipment that is purchased is MAC.  Our teachers have all been issued MacBook Pro laptops and this year we are participating in an iPad program that requires our 8th and 9th grade students to have an iPad. Their books are only on iPad, eBook editions and will probably move toward that for our other 6-12 grade classes as well in an effort to lighten the backpacks of the students.

The jury is still out as to whether or not the iPad is the ultimate solution for producing work for students.  I do not feel that it is a productivity device and writing papers or creating other types of projects using Keynote or Powerpoint can be a challenge using the iPad.  Our class worked on creating a webpage and the editing of the webpage was a challenge on the iPad because many of the Flash type of features that are added to webpages could not be done on the iPad but worked fine on the computer.

EDUC630 About Me

LeRhonda Greats (Princeton, NJ)

The technology that I am currently using include, Kindle, iPad, iPad mini, iPhone 3, MacBook Pro, Apple TV, SMARTBoard, iMac desktop computers just to name a few.  I am in charge of a computer lab that contains 15 desktop iMac computers that are networks and our building is set up with WiFi access that permits everyone to have Internet access from multiple devices.

This month marks my 15th year at my job and I just celebrated my 50th birthday so I am pretty happy about life right now. My job is one that has evolved over time thanks to the nature of technology and the flexibility of the school where I work I have been allowed to taylor my job to the needs of the students.  Two years ago I was moved from the high school down to the middle school to make sure that the technology skills that I was teaching reached a younger student base.  I am in the process of proposing that next year I not teach classes but that technology be fully integrated into our classes. I have the support of the middle school administrator to do this which is exciting.