BP22_2009111_Jill_Davis_QuoteFromBlog

One of my favorite quotes from my superintendent, Alvin Wilbanks, is "Technology will not replace the teacher, but teachers that use technology will replace teachers that do not." Teachers need to let go of the control of providing information and teach students how to search and question and share information. I believe technology is a wonderful tool and a teacher is a wonderful reflection board and a course director. Good education requires a marriage between students, technology, information, and teachers. The 21st century is here - and I like it!

Jill Davis

This morning's inspiration:)

"I have discovered in life that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go." Langston Hughes One of the great ripple makers:) Thank you Mr. Melvin:)

Music Educators - Posted comment by Tom McNamee

This comment was posted by Tom McNamee. I think this is a great idea for music educators!!

For your general music classroom, it would be fun to allow students to blog on their favorite current music. As they discuss what they like and don't like, you could chime in and explain musical aspects that you want them to be studying. I think letting them dig into the music they listen to would really be beneficial, because they would buy into it. It's like tricking them into learning what you want them to know.

I would let them go "wild" for two weeks, then have them review the blog posts of others and start making connections. For instance, if a lot students liked a certain artist, make them examine why. Is it the lyrics, the beat, etc. At the same time, they would be practicing their communication skills. They could even post picture and maybe sound clips.

Good luck with it and have fun!

Gerald Buss_ BP2_2009102_SocialBookmarking

Social Bookmarking in Action! Thanks Gerald!

I began using Delicious.com for one of my academic teams about four years ago. The team of ten students was given just a topic to research and then the day of the match they would be given the actual question that related to the topic. We always struggled with the time and effort it took to share resources. When left to their own devices the students would waste too much time surfing the internet and then in the end they would have to print out pages upon page of useless information just to get at a few bits of information. When I discovered Delicious and its ability to offer one URL that the students could access all of the bookmarks, everything changed. In additon by researching other users bookmarks we greatly increased the amount of reliable research. With all of the students adding bookmarks we soon had a tool to greatly enhance our performance.

Lina Valery_BP2_2009101_Anti-Teaching

I’m working on my forth master’s class in the Education Media Design and Technology program at Full Sail University. Through each class I have been learning new ways to improve my teaching practices and I have also become more aware of the compelling need to incorporate technology into every educational endeavor.

Learning is a 24/7 – 360 degree state of being. What does this mean? To me this means that learning is not exclusive or limited to the buildings and classrooms that hold these students. The key to education is to motivate students to learn from everywhere and at all times. As educators we can begin to motivate students by speaking their language, addressing their personal intelligences, creating a positive learning environment, and by giving them the real world tools to turn old world facts into useful and interesting material. In his article, Anti-Teaching: Confronting the Crisis of Significance, Michael Wesch writes “create a learning environment more conducive to producing the types of questions that create life long learners rather thank savvy test-takers.”

Howard Gardner’s concept of Multiple Intelligences cannot be ignored. Learners have clear strengths and weaknesses when it comes to assimilating information. As teachers we need to present information in a way that will be captured by all learners. The traditional form of education, lecture and test, will not do this. Technology is a time and cost effective way to address these diverse learners effectively and the use of Personal Learning Environments (PLE) can give students a real world learning experience. Students can now take the material they are being taught and research ways to relate it to their own lives and interests. For example, in a blog post by Dr. Holly Ludgate EMDT program director, there is a video that presents ways to give literary classics new life; through technology, students are gaining interest in reading the classics!

While I don’t think technology in itself is enough and I am not a proponent of exclusive virtual leaning, especially not in elementary school. I do think that incorporating technology in every subject should be mandatory. We cannot continue to teach students with traditional methods when the world they will be working in will be anything but traditional.

21st century schools need to incorporate multiple intelligences, brain-based learning, 2.0 tools, blogging, motivators for learning beyond the classroom walls, diverse testing methods, and teachers should be trained on how to use course management systems as well as be allowed to implement these with their students. With the influx of so many educational exclusive sites, greater safeguards are becoming more prominent within these systems.

Tim_Hodkinson_BP10_2009102_Flickr

As a reading teacher, I constantly struggle to find ways to teach important concepts such as making inferences, drawing conclusions, and making predictions. As creative as I can be with my lessons, the concepts themselves remain a challenge for the students. Though environmental factors and socioeconomic status may play a part in the academic shortfalls, there is certainly more that I can do to encourage growth.

There is no doubt in my mind that even the lowest of my readers can still achieve success on the X Box 360 or PSP they have at home. Though I would like to blame the video game industry for making print media insignificant, I would rather embrace the available technology and try to create a more engaging environment for my students. In this case, I choose Flickr, the online photo sharing site by Yahoo.

Using Flickr, I envision a lesson focusing on making inferences. To start, students would perform image searches and save their images to Flickr. From there, students would analyze the photos to infer what the setting and situation is. They could then add text to the photos to add dialogue. My goal would be to have students infer who the characters are, where they are, where they came from, what they are doing, and why they are doing it.

Enhancing students' creative thinking skills in this case would be wonderful. Students may be used to using magazine photos and images in text books for this type of activity in the past. Now, though, the addition of technology and the ability to modify photos will increase student interest in the activity. Once engaged, students will be more likely to commit to the task and get something out of it.

Kim_Davis_BP10_2009102_Flickr

For my own personal use, I could see Flickr as a tool to help build students vocabulary at varying levels of French. I might, for example, have students take words that are in the vocabulary section of their current textbook chapter and create a pictionary of those words. The students will be required to add captions that will be exclusively in French and the tags should involve at least one synonyms for each vocabulary term as well as one term that relates that photo to classmate's photo tags. This builds vocabulary, gives students a hands-on approach to learning, and presents an opportunity for collaboration with classmates in a unique and exciting way.

Aimee_Holcombe_BP3_2009102_Social_Bookmarking

Emapey. (2008, July 19). Using De.icio.us in education. Message posted to Online Sapiens: http://onlinesapiens.wordpress.com/2008/07/19/using-delicious-in-education/

Emapey believes that “Delicious is one of the most useful Web 2.0 tools!” (Emapey, 2008) This remark is further proved thorough the extensive list of useful resources to promote and understand the program. (A list that seems to clarify and prioritize Google’s thousands of sites when searched.) The list provided at this site is very helpful to the Web 2.0 researcher.
Check out these titles:
- Del.icio.us help
- My Favorite Feed Reader is My Del.icio.us Network
- Use Del.icio.us to Create Your Eportfolio
- Del.icio.us Networking Features
- Networking With Del.icio.us in Education
- Social Bookmarking Makes You Useful and Connected
- The Del.icio.us Lesson – Bokardo
- Del.icio.us Is The Recommendation Service For The Internet
- Know When People Bookmark You on Del.icio.us
- Tracking My Own Published Articles
- How to Analyze your Site with Del.icio.us
- Who Says Librarians (and Teachers) Don’t Like Tags
- “Interview With Experts: What’s so cool about del.icio.us?”
- Social Bookmarking with del.icio.us
- del.icio.us as a PR measurement tool
- Tips for Using Delicious In (Doctoral) Research
- del.icio.us libraries
- A discussion of strategies for managing social bookmarking teaching and learning activities (using del.icio.us)
- How Delicious is Changing Academic Research
- Visualizing Del.icio.us Networks
- del.icio.us Tips, Part-2: day-to-day use
- A reputation economy via “via:”?
- Del.icio.us Network Explorer
You can start building your del.icio.us network. Join the EdTechTalk Del.icio.us network. You can also continue networking by joining some fans in the del.icio.us/network/edtechtalk
(Emapey, 2008)

I delved into many of the above listed as I pondered weather or not to change my shared findings, then I realized that the learner interested in the many educational uses of Del.icio.us would find it more helpful to know the specific topics available on the program, rather than only being able to review my particular choices.

Ken Favell_BP2_2009101_Anti-Teaching

Technology is great and every day technology makes available tools and ideas that can be harnessed to great effect in the classroom, however, without a fundamental change in philosophy and ideological orientation all the technological tools in the world will make very little difference in solving the crisis of relevance.


Love this quote! My question is, if we get rid of the irrelevant budget items and spend based on this new philosophy, can we provide the need technology to more schools and more students?

PattiDuresky_BP1_2009101_Anti-Teaching

This is so right. They have to own it. Thanks, Patti.

I have found that once students feel ownership, the pride of creation and craftsmanship kicks in and more is at stake than “the grade”, it then becomes a product of “who” they are and has their signature on it, like an artist would sign a painting. PLE’s allow them to construct and create a “work of art” per se and very few people wouldn’t feel a sense of pride about that.

Robyn Douglas_BP2_2009101_Anit-Teaching

Thanks, Robyn.

As the Buddhist proverb states, ”when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” Perhaps as an educator, rather than preparing students for tests, we should start preparing them for problems. When a student has a problem they cannot answer, it is then that they learn to find the “teacher” whether that be a teaching professional, a website, a video, or a classmate. I agree with Wesch, that students demonstrate passion in learning when they are free to answer questions that are meaningful and relevant to their own lives. According to Davis (1999) there are several strategies for motivating students such as capitalizing on the students needs, active participation, ask students for feedback, high expectations, student goals, enthusiasm, de-emphasize grades and competition. Considering this, the key components that I feel should be included in new schools is definitely differentiated instruction to support the multiple intelligences, motivational tools, active participation and goal setting to support the brain-based learning theory, and technology to support the changing society.

Liz Diamond_BP2_2009101_Anti-Teaching

Thank you for allowing me to share this Liz!

“[In using PLEs, it can be possible that]…teaching is less a matter of data transmission and more a collaborative exercise in collection, orchestration, remixing, and integration of data into knowledge building. The goal for the student shifts from a need to collect information to a need to draw connections from it – to acquire it, disseminate it, and collaborate in its use.” (Educause, 2009).

Finding The Significance Of It All–

Like Wesch (2008) I also find myself questioning the significance of teaching certain concepts in my classroom. Even when I am able to connect it to “real-life” situations or current music, students still sometimes complain that the material is irrelevant to their lives. Although I can sometimes chalk this up to them being hormonal creatures of the 12- and 13- year old variety, I can’t help but think that they might be right. For example, Ragtime music, believe it or not, is responsible for many ideas we hear in rock and hip hop music today. But really, when was the last time I sat down to “enjoy” some Scott Joplin or Ernest Hogan as it relate to popular music? Therein lies the dilemma of whether students really know what they need to learn (or at least be exposed to) or whether teachers should force bits of information that they deem somewhat worthwhile down their students proverbial throats.

PLEs address much of the R2D2 model we learned about last month, where students are able to Reflect (blog), Read (RSS), Display (like Flickr in the Educause article), and potentially Do (depending on the simulations, etc. available). These ideas also tie into the theory of Multiple Intelligences, where students have a variety of stimuli from which to choose the style of learning they wish to use. It would be great for auditory and possibly musical learners to choose an RSS feed that will give them information that is useful to their learning while visual learners might subscribe to a timeline or an educational YouTube channel. However, I don’t seem many schools being open to these types of websites for student use based on the comments of my classmates in previous Wimbas. Moreover, as the Educause article suggested, I am not sure that many students know how they learn best, but I agree that the use of PLEs may help students assess their needs as learners.

Wesch’s article applied directly to Brain-Based Learning. Students would be self-motivated by incorporating their own values. Students would have plenty of opportunities for pre-exposure, whether through RSS feeds or reading a peer’s blog or other resources. Because students would be mainly in charge of their PLE, they would have the freedom to switch things up (novelty) as necessary. This would also circle back around to motivation.

Although I am enjoying Full Sail’s CMS set up, I am not sure that it is the answer for all students. There is still the potential “What do I need to do to pass this assignment” question rather than “What can I learn from this assignment?” I do believe, however, that the organizational aspect of the system is helpful to most (if not all) students.

If self-generating questions equal self-generated learning, how can we use technology to inspire curiosity? If we offer students outlets to explore subjects on their own terms, will they learn concepts that will benefit them later in life? (You know, since that’s the point of school anyway.) [side note: Wow, this sounds like an intriguing CBL project. I wish I would’ve been prompted to think about this a couple of months ago! Thanks for helping me question, Rena!]

Overall, I think that 21st century learners can use the abundance of information available online in a more effective manner than teachers are currently allowing. I also believe that when students are engaged in something they are passionate about, they learn on a deeper level and are more likely to 1. retain and 2. apply their knowledge at a later time. PLEs, with guidance and some structure, may be the answer to fostering these types of engagement in learning. I would like to think that as students age, they would have the opportunity to contribute more media and literature for younger students to utilize.

Educause Learning Initiative (2009, May). 7 things you should know about... personal learning environments. Retrieved

from http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7049.pdf

Wesch, M. (2008). Anti-teaching: Confronting the crisis of significance. Canadian Education Association. 48(2). 4-7.

Retrieved from http://www.scribd.com/doc/6358393/AntiTeaching-Confronting-the-Crisis-of-Significance.

2009101_ Danni_Brayer_ BP2

Students’ crave and need real world problems for which answers must be found. These problems can be solved ‘creatively’ with new insight and thought processes that are not the norm using a student innate ability or style to resolve it. What better way to have a student get excited about learning then for a solution to be found to that real world problem and for the solution to be implemented. That student will be able to say, “I helped figure that out. I made a difference.”

INCREDIBLE BLOGS:0

I just have to tell you all that I can't get to the next post quickly enough to see the incredible things you have done with these blogs. Thank you all for the diligence, creativity, and patience you have shown this month. If you have not already, please send me an email (or add a comment below) stating it is okay for me to re-post information you have posted with you name for credit to my blog for others to see. Back to the blogs:)

Here are some great examples from this month's blogs. These are named according to the directions. Please take not of these for the rest of the month.

BP7_2009102_Edit_a_Page

To rearrange your tabs, go to the drop down menu next to the tab. Choose edit this tab. This will take you to a new page. You can use the up and down arrows to move the tab to the correct spot. Also, on this page, you can select a different layout. Your page can have one, two, or three columns or you can change your theme from here. Explore, have fun, and personalize your pages. MAKE SURE before you return to your iGoogle that you save your changes. If you go back before you save, all your changes will be lost.

BP6_2009102_Order_of_Tabs

Please make sure the order of you tabs looks like the screen shot here. If you are having trouble, please to to Blogger help or ping me on iChat. We can screen share and I will walk you through the steps if necessary. Also, look at the screen shots above for how to change the order of your tabs.

iGoogle ETC page

My iGoogle ETC page. Let's go Pens!!!!! Anyone follow hockey?

iGoogle AR/CBL Page

Here is my Action Research Page. Make sure the image you upload is set to LARGE

iGoogle WGO/Home Page

Please post your screen shots to you Blog. This is my iGoogle WGO page.

Conversation with Kara

Let's see if this works.

Test

This is only a test;)