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.
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
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.
Sunday, February 10, 2013
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.
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.
Sunday, February 3, 2013
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.
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.
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.
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