Blog 5

1) Dr. Robert's presentation

Tuesday's presentation provided a fair amount of information about the increase in what our children are being subjected to with regards to media. However, the most relevant part of Dr. Robert's presentation was the one fact that he kept alluding to... Dr. Roberts presentation was outdated. The data from the latest study was 2-3 years old and failed to include some of the most current mothods in which our children are accessing media today. By not being able to include the effects of smartphones, tablets and other ereaders, the information provided could only be used to show that yes, the amount of media that our children are shown is ever increasing. What also stuck out to me was the lack of information that many of those in the audience have with regards to media and the use of devices that carry said media. As teachers we have a responsibility to make sure that we know of what we speak, instead of just blindly repeating what someone else has told us.

2-3) Read the NY Times article...

I am a huge advocate of online learning, having used it extensively in my undergraduate experience.

(Warning! Description of personal experience follows)

Because of the various cutbacks in education, I found myself unable to take a class I needed to graduate (the class wasn't going to be taught again for a year at CSUEB). I was able to find the class at a junior college, 50 miles away. The ability to take this one online class, without having to commute 100 miles twice a week, was extremely valuable to me!

In general, the advantages of online classes (offering students a greater curriculum, ability to study and 'attend' course from home,etc), far outweigh the disadvantages (accountability, etc). A student who access online education can broaden his education by learning from a greater variety of educators, the community benefits because the school or district can broaden the diversity of what is taught. As an educator, I can broaden my horizons, teaching for different schools, districts (or even different states).

4) Technology Resources for the Teacher

http://www.techsmith.com/download/jing/

What a great resource, this can be used to help model actions and activities that students need to replicate as they study and/or create their own work. Teachers can show students step by step how to accomplish classroom and homework tasks. This can also be extended in collaboration with other teachers, showing someone how I created a task, lesson or exercise. I often will work in a new environment and sometimes forget the exact steps that I took, making it difficult to replicate the process for others.

https://twitter.com/

I do not use Twitter, but this would seem to be an excellent tool to remind student of important dates and events in the classroom. Teachers can remind a single student of the entire classroom with a couple of clicks. Of course the teacher would need to make sure that all students have appropriate access and that the teacher uses Twitter accordingly, (imagine if the teacher made an assignment change and one or more students did not receive the change). The potential downside might be that students have too much interaction with the teacher outside of the classroom, (I imagine that this can be controlled by the teacher).

http://www.superteachertools.com/

Another cool site offering a variety of tools to teachers. Have you ever tried to make your own Jeopardy or Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. I have it can be very time consuming. Sharing games and even game templates can be a big timesaver. Make sure that you run through every aspect of the game or tool before using it in the classroom, as some download can contain links or advertising to sites that at a very minimum would interrupt your classroom.

http://titanpad.com/

Titanpad seems like a great collaboration tool, should teachers be working together, at the same time on a project. I suppose students could also use this, but I would be an advocate of students getting together to collaborate on projects whenever possible.