Final Reflection 2

I really had a good time participating in this online course. I have done online courses in the past and the one thing I like is being able to work at my own speed when I want to. I could sit in my Pajamas, drink coffee, and work until I didn't feel like working any more. I didn't really struggle with any of the topics or assignments at all. I am very comfortable working on computers and exploring different aspects of them, I think they are fun! I liked the structure because it broke down the different topics and gave the timeline for each to be finished. The content was very appropriate, I learned about so many new programs and Ideas that are out in the world being used everyday. I would never have had the exposure to these if I hadn't taken this class.
The instructor was very accessible and gave good feedback when I needed it. You are always a pleasure to work with Lori. My only recommendation for future offerings is to keep it relevant to what is going on in the world of education today. For example, the blogspots are great because classrooms around the world are using them and they can be very beneficial for learning. I am always interested in new websites being used and created in the world of education.
I will definitely recommend this course for others to take, I had a lot of fun and will probably participate in another online class in the fall. Anything to do with websites, and webquesting would be interesting.
Thanks for everything Lori!!

A Time for Reflection 3

I have really enjoyed this course, it has taught me so many new things regarding technology that I had heard about but never tried. I really like the use of a blog and wikis to generate and share new ideas. I think it is such a great concept that we can utilize ideas from people across the world who are doing the exact same job we are, and trying to achieve the same success! As a resource room teacher, I would really like to try and use either a blog site or a wiki to help my students improve their study skills. Getting ideas from not only other teachers, but other students may be the push some of them need.

I am a technology person, it doesn't scare me and I have fun with it. If we are going to keep up with our students today and in the future, it has to happen now. This class has proven that technology is not scary, it is cool! I like it and I hope more people start to use it in their classes, assignments, and even in homework assignments. If the students could utilize some of these tools for homework, believe me more homework would get done because it would be fun!

School 2.0 The School of the Future!

I really enjoyed reading about school 2.0, it is neat to think about education in the future and what it will look like. I think that it is time to look at education and try to find ways to redesign how we do things. Technology is not just the future, it is the here and now! As far as I can see it, education is behind the times and we, as educators, need to catch up!

The one thing about School 2.0 that I really like is the idea of collaboration between school, home, and the community. I mean, we are supposed to be preparing our students for the future, shouldn't it be parallel to what the communities they live want and need? After all, the more support a young person has, the more successful they will be! I really like how they call it a "Learning Ecosystem" I think that says it all. The students are always asking, when will I ever use this in my life? Well if the community is involved in the planning, and the education is relevant, then they won't have to ask this question anymore!

I wouldn't keep anything off of this map and I wouldn't change anything either. I think it makes not only great connections, but great sense! I really like and hope I am around long enough to see it happen one day!

Dr. Zhao, A modern day Philosopher!

I really enjoyed listening to Dr. Zhao, he was entertaining, fun, and has a lot of good ideas about education. It is refreshing to hear someone say all the things that, as an educator, we are always thinking. Things like how the people on the front lines, who work with kids, should have the power and how the people who have the power need to work closer with kids! I love his philosophy of how education is always trying to fix the past and needs to work to the present and the future. How we as educators need to push more creativity and get our students ready to live in a computer world.

I agree with Dr. Zhao about how we need to make students active contributers to the economy. I find that when students are held responsible for their work and actions, then they perform to their highest abilities. We need to get them ready to contribute to the digital society by actively participating and working hard for it. We are a technological society and if we want our students to be successful in it, then we need to prepare them to their fullest potential.

Collaborative Projects

I really enjoyed listening to Kevin Honeycutt's presentation, he is funny, entertaining, and definitely passionate about teaching. He has very strong beliefs and ideas about learing through collaboration and working as a team. I like the idea of the kids leading the project, just giving them a few guidelines and then letting them soar with the information they learn. I thought it was funny when he was telling about the airplane project, how the two teams, as he describes, became "corporations" instead of working together. Kids become very protective of their projects and it can become like a competition. I think if they have clear guidelines to follow and the collaboration is a big piece of it, then they will learn to work together.

Being a resource room teacher, I am not sure how I would use the collaborative project. The only thing I can think of is when I have students working on an assignment for a regular education teacher, then the students could collaborate on the assignments. It may also be neat for the students to see what other classes, in other areas, are doing for the same book, story, or to see how others teach a similar math concept or social studies concept. Skills based lessons could also be beneficial for this type of learning, having kids learn from other kids. They love that!

Reflection 2 - Make a Choice

So many tools, so little time! I find all of the tools we have learned about to be beneficial in different ways. I still really like Blogging better than Wikiing. It is more fun. The tool I like the best though is the online bookmarking. I really like the idea of being able to just push a button and "poof" your sites you love are all saved in one convienent place. Plus looking at my classmates bookmarks gave me some ideas for my own site. I work with many different kinds of learners and I think being able to create a page of useful sites for them, is a great resource they can take with them, not only in high school, but all through college as well. I am definitely going to use this site to create a list of resources for my resource students to hopefully help them with papers, research, etc.

Wikis as a classroom tool

I found the Wiki to be a fun thing! I participated in the famous people game, naming people, putting hints down about them, and researching fun facts. It not only gave me the information I needed to put information on the wiki, but it taught me some things that I didn't know. I like the idea of the wiki being a constant teaching tool not just for one person but for many people to utilize.
Wiki's also have a lot of potential because they can be used for a ton of different topics and ideas. You can use it for everything from content area learning to skills topics in resource room. I also think a Wiki could be a productive way to get different ideas from many different resource teachers on how to work skills into resource periods. I am always looking for different and new ideas to "spice" things up. I look forward to doing more with both Wiki's and Blogs!

Different Video Sites

I have recently become a "You Tuber" and it is really fun!! I love the fact that there is so much information that you can access with the swipe of a couple of keys and hit search. This is my favorite site hands down. The content can be used in many different ways. You can access videos and use them to demonstrate different concepts being taught in the classroom. This is exceptionally useful in courses like Economics and Government where you might want to use a modern day example to demonstrate a subjece. For example, I was in an Economics class one day and the teacher was discussing the stock market. He wanted the students to see what it was like when trading on the actual stock floor of Wall Street. We used U-Tube to find a section of the movie Trading Spaces where they actually trade on the floor. It was cool for the kids to see an example and actually "get" what he was talking about.
On Teacher Tube, I really like the "hands-on" demonstrations of how to do things. When I went on, I watched a video of how to make a paper turkey. Fun projects for kids are just one of the best parts of this site. There is a ton of information on this site for teachers to use to challenge their students in fun yet informative ways. When you give a student an assignment and they are learning, but it is fun and informative and they don't realize they are learning, that is the best!
The feature to NextVista that I really like are the videos of different lessons for the core academic subjects. Especially the math links, because there are so many different ways to do math that it makes it easy to find different teachers to meet the needs of many different students.
Thanks for the insight into some of the different possibilities of sites out there to help kids learn!

Benefits of Classroom Blogging

I am learning more and more everyday about Classroom Blogging and how much fun it is!! I think classroom blogs are a great way for teachers and their classes to communicate around the world. When students can talk to other students about what they are doing in their classes, and find out that they are learning a lot of the same information, they realize there are other students just like them. I also think it is neat for the students to hear how other classroom teachers present the information. That could inspire classroom discussions with their teachers to give them ideas for presentations, projects, and activities. I think classroom blogging is fun for all ages. Children these days are very technologically advanced, my son teaches me new things on the computer all the time!! When they can use computers to do class work, they are much more apt to complete a more thorough piece of work. They find computers to be fun and exciting so they want to work on them as long as possible!
Being a resource room teacher, I don't really teach classroom lessons. So I was thinking, how would I use this in my classroom so it would be beneficial to my students. One idea I thought of was to use it as a tool to communicate with other resource room teachers to get ideas for skill building in my resource classes. I think it would be really fun to talk to other teachers in different areas of the country and see how they utilize their resource time and to find out how the students respond to the different ideas.

My First Blog Spot!!

Hello, My name is Joelle and I am creating this blog for an online class I am taking through Hilton CSD. I am very excited about blogging, and I can't wait to learn how to do a lot of different things with it. I am a resource room teacher, so I am hoping to use my blogspot for different things in my class.