Learning Journal 12

I have learned sooooo much from this class in such a short little semester.
1)What have I learned about integrating technology into the classroom?
I learned that using technology in the classroom is the becoming extremely important in keeping up with the 21st century. We have so many new technologies available that make networking and collaboration so much easier. Teaching children with these tools will only increase their level of learning.

2)What I still want to know about using technology in the classroom.
I guess I would like to know a proper balance of when technology is good to use and when it can be better to stick with the old fashioned way. I guess you can almost always incorporate technology into a lesson plan somewhere. Even if I were to say that I just want students to make up a story, I could have them type it up, make it into a digital story, or have them act it out onto a youtube video.

I would also like to find out ways to get more technology into classrooms that can't afford it. Are there any special programs through companies to get used computers or microphones or things like that.

3)Advice for students taking this class in the future:
-Failure is okay!!
-Keep up with your learning journal
-Don't do your work for the sake of the grade, do your work for the sake of learning
-Keep an open mind to the new ideas
-Don't be afraid of technology!

Learning Networks

After learning about learning networks, we actually had to join one and get in on the action. I'm not gonna lie, I was not very excited about having to engage with someone I didn't know. For one, I felt that since I wasn't a teacher, some of the net workers wouldn't really be interested in what I had to say. Also, I had this fear of doing something new and going out of my comfort zone. When I realized I was just being stupid and lazy, I decided to join the Classroom 2.0 site. This site seemed to be strictly for education and required approval from the site owners to gain access.

When I joined the site I made sure to put up a profile picture and put a little bit of information about what I was doing on the website. I didn't know exactly where to start when it came to conversing with the other teachers so I put that part off for a day or 2. When I finally went back on the site, I started reading some of the other conversations that teachers had been posting to the forums. Some of the discussions were very interesting, but I wasn't sure if I had enough expertise to give back any good feedback. I quickly came across a posting about a teacher asking if she thought that Facebook could be a useful tool for education. I got really excited and immediately replied. I told her about our Art Show project and how Facebook, so far, has been the best mode of communication for the students. I haven't received any replies back yet, but when I do, I'll have to comment back on this post.

Overall, I think that Classroom 2.0 is an excellent way to increase your learning networks. It still amazes me what we can do with technology and how we can use it in such a positive way to enhance our learning and communication. I can speak to a teacher from half way across the world and share ideas and collaborate. When I have a problem trying to create a difficult lesson plan, or am having trouble trying to reach a difficult student, I can post my troubles online and another teacher with a great idea can post back to me and offer advice on how to deal with these problems. Yay!

Social Action and Communication Skills

Today I am reading about social action and the importance of communication skills for effective social action. My response to the video and presentation are below the activity.
Activity:
3 Social Action Related Site:
1. http://www.dosomething.org/
This site would be appropriate for high school students and higher levels of middle schools. This site encourages teens to get involved in real world causes. This would be a good site for maybe a history teacher, who is teaching about social injustice. The teacher could have students use this site to find ways to help fight the repercussions of social injustices they have learned about.
2. http://redblueamerica.com/
This website could be used in a high school history or government class. Students could relate the history of government to what is going on the government currently. This site would allow them to view both viewpoints of a debate.
3. http://www.greenbin.com/
This site could be useful for high school students. Students in a science class could do a research project where they find an idea that someone posts about how to be green and then research the validity of if this "green idea" would really work and why and how it would work.

Communication Skills related Site:
1. http://www.communication-skills-4confidence.com/improve-communication-skills.html
This site could be useful for high school and college students. It is a site to help students improve their communication skills. An English or speech class could use this sites communication exercises to learn and become more confident with their communication.
2. http://www.communication-skills.info/
This site could be used for high schoolers and college students to learn how to communicate effectively.
3. http://www.kidscom.com/
This blog could be used for elementary school students. This site allows kids to chat with other kids in a safe environment. They could practice their communication skills online while playing games with other students.
Reflections:
Here are my thoughts on a video of Tony Robins:
What Skills being demonstrated? Tony is an extremely gifted speaker that immediately drew me in to what he was saying. I was watching the video in the morning and was certain I was going to fall asleep if I was going to try and watch it, but I didn't because he was such a good speaker. He basically used all of the skills of effective speaking, especially taking command of his message and doing so with passion.
Is he acknowledging differences? Yes, he acknowledged several types of differences in his examples. He often used examples which could apply to a borad spectrum of people who think and feel differently.
Is he being assertive? He was very assertive and confident in his speaking. That is definitely what drew me in to listen. He used creativity and humor to get people's attention, which I really enjoyed.
Is he sharing his feelings? He shared his feelings about how important this message was to him and how it has personally affected him in his own life. What really stood out to me was his idea that strangers DO care about you, so you should care about them.
Is he aware of the information that is "coming in"? He was aware of incoming information. He made real world connections with 9/11 and he made use of Al Gore being in the audience to play into his ideas.
Is he being concise, clear, and providing specific details supported by concrete examples? He was very clear and concise. He didn't try to over complicate what he was saying. He just made some very simple points with very strong examples to help visualize what he was saying. He made all of his examples relatable to audience members.

I then watched a presentation by Simon Jones about using technology to communicate effectively. More specifically he addressed slide presentations. I agreed with most of what he was saying as far as not putting too much information on a slide and using repetition when necessary. I was not sure about his ideas on not using bullet points. I use bullet points in personal work when studying because I am comfortable with them. His reason for not using them was because students quickly tire of them. I think bullets can be used in moderation, especially when making a point. For me, having a bulleted form, or outlined form, better helps me to organize the incoming information in my brain.

Curiosity, Imagination, Creativity, & Play

Step 1: What do I know about curiosity, imagination, creativity, & play?
So far in my life, I fell that I know a great deal about the above topics. I think they are the fundamentals of how and why we learn at such a young age. I was a curious child, which made me experiment, which in turn made me learn. Also at a young age, I think most everyone had wild imaginations which I think goes hand in hand with creativity. And of course playing made learning seem all the more fun.

Step 2: What do I want to know about Curiosity, Imagination, Creativity, & Play?
I want to know why we sometimes lose our sense of the above as we get older. And how can we regain these important aspects back to help us make learning more fun. How can I incorporate these things into a lesson plan for highschoolers or college students, without making them run screaming because they are too embarrassed to have fun and explore.

Step 3: What did I learn?
Through the videos, I learned how important it really is to not lose sight of curiosity, imagination, creativity, & play in education. Below are some of the key points that stood out to me.
1. We get educated out of our creativity because we are taught not to be wrong. It is extremely important for us to take risks in life because that it how we learn. Many times, the way I learn best, is when I make a mistake. Yes, its no fun to fail, but learning it first hand helps you learn it better.

2. Open your mind to new experiences and use your imagination to imagine how other people live. This forces us to leave our comfort zones, which can be very hard. But there is so much in the world out there for us to learn, we just have to go out there and experience it.

3. Play is natural-this came as no surprise to me. This made complete sense. Especially when they showed how animals play, all the way through adulthood. It appears almost unnatural for us to not include play at older ages in education.

4. Why isn't everyone successful in life if everyone is capable? Is it laziness or fear? This question really spoke tome when I thought about a lot of the decisions I made in my decision to pick a major even. I told myself that I was afraid to be a premed major because I was not smart enough. But really, when I look back on my thinking, I know I was capable of being smart enough, I just was too lazy to put the work in to be that smart.

Fair Use, Copyright, and Creative Commons

Guide
Notes

Presentation


Please describe how the multimedia artifact you submitted for this assignment demonstrates your understanding of the following issues:



(a) Educational Fair Use
To me, fair use is a hard concept to describe with short terms or a presentation. The only way I really understood what is fair under fair use was to read the limitations in the PDF file. So intstead of trying to overexplain, I just provided the link to the PDF which describes the Fair Use policies.



(b) Creative Commons
I described Creative Commons in a basic manner. After showing how confusing it might be to understand fair use, I lead into Creative Commons and showed that its an easy way to share and collaborate information. I also showed that Flickr is a website that works in conjunction with Creative Commons.

(3) Please provide a self-evaluation of your artifact using the following criteria:



Creativity: This presentation was very basic with a few pictures to help explain the text. It was not very creative in its style and gave just basic information

Artifact design: The artifact was very simple. I just uploaded the picture from Flickr and made sure I provided a link to give credit to the author. Very basic.



Success in demonstrating knowledge of content: I think I gave the bare minimum when it came to describing the information. I myself don't fully understand copyright and fair use so it was hard to try and present the information.



Effort put forth: As far as creative effort, not very much was put forth. I think after being so frustrated with trying to understand what I was supposed to be doing I failed to put much effort forth in the actual artifact.



Level of learning attained: I attained an Okay amount of learning.


(4) Provide feedback on the assignment so I can continually improve the course.
This was one of my least favorite assignments so far. It might have been that I had so many tests this week. It was hard for me to try and focus and learn the material. I think the creating of a multimedia artifact part was too much for a homework assignment. I already dreaded trying to figure out copyright because it always confuses me and when I knew I had to create something to demonstrate my learning about it, I kind of just gave up before I even began.

RSS Feed

I am following 12 different sites on my Google Feeder Reader. At first I didn't know what I was really looking for when I searched for sites. Because I am a nursing major I started off searching for nursing sites. I subscribed to several of the nursing sites because some had potential job opportunities and current issues in nursing. When I started thinking more from an educators perspective I searched for lesson plans. I subscribed to an anatomy and some biology science lesson planning sites. I started thinking about how my high school biology teacher always used to have these new interesting topics that related to what we were learning about in biology. To get current topics on science I subscribed to several science journals including the New York Times and PBS.

I chose the sites I did based on the number of other subscribers listed, and also based on how often new material was published from that site. I stayed away from the sites that rarely published material or that had less than 100 subscribers. I searched for PBS because in my past learning experiences they have always provided amazing videos and documentaries.

I did not find this exercise too difficult. I was a little confused at first as to what types of sites I was going to be searching for. Once I started thinking about newspapers and journals that post weekly articles, that's when I started to find A ton of useful material. I guess sifting through the different sites to find a good one was the most time consuming part.

As a teacher a feeder reader could be extremely beneficial for both teaching and learning. For me, if I were teaching a biology class, I could easily pull up relevant current events in science to supplement my lesson planning. I could also follow the lesson planning sites to find new ways to make my lessons more interesting. I could have my students join a feeder reader and have them pull up current events on a topic we learn in class. This could be a fun class project! What made freshman year high school biology so interesting to me was that our teacher was always showing us articles about how they were using all of these new technologies in the medical fields. That has been my all time favorite class and with a feeder reader its really easy to keep up with all this cool new science stuff!

What I want to know more about feeder readers is how to better organize all of my different feeds. It was pretty easy sorting through the information with only 12 feeds but if I had a ton more it might get a bit frustrating. Also, I would like to know if we can share the sites we are getting feeds from with someone else or if someone can view or subscribe to my feeds.

Access

As shown in the readings, socioeconomic status affects access to the internet and social media. There is a technology gap based on socioeconomic status which prohibits many without the funds to have access to the internet. The first article showed a significant gap between income and access to the internet. Because the article was written in 2002, I am curious as to what those numbers would be today. It would not surprise me if those numbers had already drastically increased. As far as income affecting social media groups I do not totally agree with what the last article was saying. I think one of the main differences in Facebook and Myspace users is age, not income. Most everyone I knew in high school was on Myspace, and as soon as we found out about Facebook from older siblings or other friends, everyone began to shift to Facebook, regardless of socioeconomic status. I guess though, that manny began to switch to Facebook when they got to college, and if people couldn't afford to go to college, then maybe that is why they never really caught on to the Facebook trend. Twitter on the other hand, I associate more with upper class because of its popularity with celebrities like Ashton Kutcher and John Mayer.

Access to social media and the internet are extremely important in this increasingly developing world. As much as I like to fight this, the world just keeps moving faster and faster and if you don't have the means to technology, you can't keep up with it. To deny people who are already of lower socioeconomic statuses access to these technologies would only put them lower and lower economically. Most every high paying job requires use of the internet and other social media.

I find that it could be difficult to support students without access to the internet at home. Because knowing how to use technology and social media is becoming necessary to survive economically in this world, I would have to somehow teach my students how to use it while in the classroom. There would have to be a lot of collaboration with other teachers and fund raising to help my students have access to the internet. I would hope that my school would have a computer lab, and if so, I would fully utilize that lab whenever possible and make sure students have access to that lab. Its sad to think that a huge chunk of students don't have computers or access to the internet at home like I always have. I can not imagine surviving without my computer and feel that in the past it may have been a luxury, but now it is becoming more of a necessity.

Participatory Culture--The New Literacy

These were very interesting readings which are extremely applicable to the way students are learning with new technology.

1. Features of participatory culture that were evident in the the Networked Student Video were mostly, well, all of the them. I was extremely impressed with the initiative of the student and his curiosity to learn the way he did. With the layout of his class there was no printed textbook, and it was mostly online. The student learns to use judgment in finding scholarly and dependable resources with good content. He also uses negotiation, especially when he goes so far as to contact the author of a work he liked and collaborated to have a skype interview with the author for his class. He was also collaborative with his use of social bookmarking, where he shared useful links and found useful links as well. He used blogs online collaboratively as a way of circulation, where he spurred discussion and further learning of himself and his peers. I was very proud of this student for his the amount of work he did in this class, and the fact that he was only in high school. I thought, however, that the element of play was missing from this mode of learning. There could have been online games that the teacher could create or find to help with the learning process. But maybe the teacher wanted the students to find those types of learning games on the internet on their own. While watching the video, I was worried about whether they would actually need a teacher with this new style of learning. I was quickly reaffirmed when they directly addressed my question: yes, a teacher is present. I think though, that the role of the teacher changes in this context, as more of a guide to finding content rather than directly teaching content.

2. The learning experience of the student looks extremely different than what I was used to in high school. Only in college have a I started to use blogging, social bookmarking and the internet for online texts. In my school, the most technology I used was watching videos on YouTube, and I did a podcast once my senior year. I think the reasons that learning is so different is because of the participation gap. In high school, not everyone had access to the internet all of the time, or even knew how to properly use the technology. The teachers were not trained either as to how to use these technologies in their lesson planning. I think these new technologies will create a student that will have to do more work to find the information they need to learn. This takes a lot of initiative and curiosity on the part of the student, as does reading from a boring textbook. For me personally, I like the old style of learning because I am afraid of technology at times. As I have witnessed with my 8 year old cousins though, I am going to have to catch up with the rest of the world. My cousins will enjoy this type of learning because it is more relevant to them. They already know how to upload songs on iPods and download games off the internet. How fast things change!

Critical Thinking and Problem Sovling

Part One
Example Learning Objective: The student will learn the major parts of the brain

Knowledge: The student will learn the anatomical terms regarding the brain.
Understanding: The students will learn the physiology of the different terms of the brain
Application: The students will see how these anatomical parts are studied by doctors, psychologists, biologist

Analysis/Synthesis: Students will be able to write down each part of the brain and how they work in conjunction with each other

Evaluating: Students can dissect a brain (maybe a sheep brain in a lab) and be able to identify what that brain has in common with the human brain. (Why didn't I think of this for my lesson plan!!!???)

Creating: Students will have to create a model of the human brain, using whatever materials they like

Part Two
Even though the teacher mentioned this point several times in the class it does not surprise me that the students did not remember this on their final exam. First of all the way he taught the students, even though he used a demonstration, did not answer the question as to why it was hotter in the summer. After reading his explanation myself, it was unclear to me exactly why it was hotter in the summer due to the angle of the sun as opposed to the earth being closer to the sun in the summer. The students may have been paying attention but were just unable to fully understand what the teacher was trying to say. If the concept was so important than the teacher should have assessed the students understanding of the concept prior to the final exam. He could also ask other more experienced teachers on how to better get that concept across to the students.

Critical Thinking Readings and GWAP

Part 1
So far, what I already know about critical thinking is that I use it everyday in school and when encountering any type of problem. I feel like critical thinking strategies are so smashed into my brain that I don't even realize that I am using them. When being asked to pinpoint strategies for critical thinking I would include: understanding all parts to a situation, and learning the who, what, when, where, how, and more importantly why to a question. The video clip asked which is better: give a man a fish? Or teach a man how to fish? This was a very familiar passage to me because my parents used this approach to helping the less fortunate. Part of what the video was trying to say was that critical thinkers are more capable of making independent decisions.

As an educator, I want to know how to teach critical thinking skills to my students. I was blessed with having amazing teachers in middle school and high school who nailed critical thinking into my head. Those skills prepared me to handle college classes and be engaged in my learning. I want to know at what age children really are capable of being critical thinkers, and how to better incorporate those skills into all aspects of learning. As shown in the video, critical thinkers ask questions and seek evidence. I believe that this promotes more curious learners who will be excited about learning.

I am a bit nervous about my lesson planning, being that its my first time "playing" teacher. I definitely want my students to learn how to think critically when they are learning. I have to try and connect that into the plans by making sure the students are doing more than just memorizing facts. Maybe at the beginning of a section I can ask open ended questions to get students to try and come up with their own answers to questions, based on what they already know. Also, after presenting the information, again, assign open ended questions regarding what they were just taught. These questions would include definitions first, to make sure they knew the material. Also, the questions would then go further, asking for explanations about the material, and why, and try to make connections with other things they have learned. I would even let these questions be opinion questions, just as long as they could use evidence from the material to back it up.

Part 2
I had never heard of GWAP before this class and was a little bit confused when I first got there. Basically, you are playing games, with some partner you can't see, online. These games show either a video, and image, or a music clip, in which you and your partner must try and get a matching tag for the image or clip. This is supposed to help computers try and think more like a human. This concept scared me a little bit and made me think of robots taking over the world once they became smarter than humans. It was a cool tool though, that really got me to try and describe things in simple words, so that other people would understand them.

I'm not exactly sure how I could use the GWAP in my lesson planning. I would be teaching sciences, so maybe in some way, I could get pictures of different internal organs that students would have to type in keywords about the picture. I guess by making them try and get their partner to think of the same word, it would make it more of a critical thinking activity.

Introduction to How People Learn

Preexisting knowledge, shown in the text, is an extremely important concept of teaching an learning that I had not yet thought much about before. Addressing preexisting knowledge now makes complete sense when dealing with teaching people of any age. A students will learn a concept better if they can relate it to something that they already know. If they have no concept of what is being taught then they are only learning disconnected pieces of information.

Active learning is another important concept of learning that should be incorporated into teaching students at all levels. Before reading this I did not picture elementary kids being able to assess themselves the way that most college students do in their own learning. Younger students would be more engaged in their learning if they understood how and why they were assessing how well they knew their material.

Some key points of the reading were: in teaching we must make sure students understand what their learning rather than just memorizing facts, we need to recognize that students have preexisting knowledge that can either help conceptualize or confuse what they are being taught, and students need to be active learners.

Meta-cognition is the ability of a person to assess how well they are learning a material, and the ability to predict how well they would test on that material. According to the text, teaching meta-cognition to students at an elementary level is extremely beneficial. It is a skill that will be used not only in education but in the real world of students. Using it to teach information will force students to become more engaged in their own learning. For teachers, this means they will have to learn how to teach this vital skill to their younger students.

As shown in the text, assessment is vital to the learning environment. Assessments help teachers measure how well they are teaching, and help students measure how well they are learning. What could be changed, however, is the way in which we approach assessment. Instead of basing it solely on spitting out memorized facts, it should assess more critical thinking and application skills. For example, as much as I hate to say it, using word problems in math would be beneficial in assessing if students knew how and when to use the math taught to them. Another idea introduced about assessment is that it should not be strictly grade based. It should also focus on students truly assessing how well they know a material and going back to understand material they did not test well on.

Course Expectations

My expectations of this course are to learn about the new technology available and how to effectively use it to learn and teach. Whenever I hear the word technology I usually cringe because I feel like its way over my head and somewhat like a foreign language. Hopefully, this course will help to rid me of my fears of using technology.

I expect my classmates to have respect for me and the teacher by being mindful of other people's opinions, not speaking out of turn, and not speaking when the instructor is teaching. I hope my classmates and I can work together as we approach new materials and collaborate our ideas about how we can use the material for education.

I expect my instructor to come to class ready to teach enthusiastically. I expect him to be organized and fair with his grading. I expect him to have respect and appreciation for my ideas. I hope that he is willing to be patient with those of us in the class who are not technologically savvy.

Questions: How can I apply technology to teaching other nurses, or teaching patients about how to care for a specific medical problems? (I'm a nursing major)
Can you teach us how to properly use powerpoint so that the learners retain the information being presented?