Check Out This Slideshare Presentation

I think that it is a really cool idea to add audio to this powerpoint. That way, students who miss class, need extra reinforcement, or forget something that you said in class can come back to this PowerPoint at a different time and review it. However, I found adding my voice to be very difficult. I do not have a microphone on my computer so I was unable to add sound. Therefore, I borrowed my roommate's computer, which is a Mac and saves all audio recordings to to an M4a file. However, in order to upload sound files onto slideshare, they need to be in an MP3 format. Therefore, I enlisted my roommate and her brother to help me figure out how to convert the file. They played around with it for an hour and a half until we finally figured out how to do it. On the bright side, I learned that you can go to the website zamzar.com to transfer a M4a file to an MP3 file, and they will email you the new file. Although the end product turned out pretty well, I'm not sure that the experience that I had trying to figure out how to add the vocals was worth it. I probably would not use this technology again, at least not on a Mac. I'm still not really sure how we finally got the files converted and uploaded, and I don't know if I could duplicate the effort if I had to do it again. I also don't really like listening to myself talk online. I always feel like is sound a lot different than I intended to. Also, the sound quality is not perfect. There are a few crackly spots where I recorded over something that I had already said. Therefore, I have mixed feelings about this type of technology.

Cleaning Your Ear Molds

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Personal Learning Network

So far, I think that my personal learning network utilizes a lot of great tools. I love being able to read about what other students are learning in their classrooms and their field placements. I feel like a great deal of what they are learning is really relevant to me, but they are not necessarily topics that I've thought about before or heard about from my teachers. I love when someone writes a topic on their blog that is more contraversial, and I have the opportunity to read multiple different people's opinions about the topic. I feel like I can really learn the most when I have the chance to see both sides of an issue. However, potential drawbacks to this are that it can be difficult to keep up with posting in a blog, twitter, webpage, etc. We all have busy lives and I feel like it would be easy to let updating my PLN slip by the wayside. Also, it's really easy to read someone's comment and to think that you will respond to them later, and all of a sudden, a whole week has gone by and you are just remembering to respond to their post. By that time, however, they probably aren't checking back anymore to see if you responded, and you have lost their interest from the initial post.

However, tools like the RSS feed are really helpful to ensure that you don't get bogged down in the time that it takes to check multiple blogs, several times a week. This tool allows me to go to one place and easily see if any particular blog that I follow has updated their feed since the last time that I checked. If they haven't, I will know quickly, and I won't waste my time traveling to their blog page. Also, tools such as tweetdeck do the same thing for twitter and facebook. It allows me to quickly see the updates since the last time that I visited either of those two website, without having to sift through information that I already have read. Also, it allows me to sort out new tweets, pictures, status updates, etc. so that I can quickly focus on exactly what I am looking for. These features do help save a tremendous amount of time.

I think that I would prefer to read less blogs, more frequently than read a huge number of educational blogs. It seems much more overwhelming to remember to check a lot of different places. Therefore I think that it is much more beneficial to find a few blogs that I enjoy and check them more often. As far as following educational blogs on twitter, I have found that most of the ones that I have chosen are okay, but I have had to sift through a lot of information that wasn't that useful. For every piece of really good information that I found from a tweet, I had about seven other pieces of information that I looked into but didn't really think was valuable. However, the one thing that I do really like about giving and receiving information on twitter is that the posts are very short, and thus quick and easy to read and write. Therefore, the amount of time that I spend on twitter at any one moment in time is very minimal, and thus I don't find it to be as time consuming as blogging. Therefore, I think that the PLN is a great tool for exchanging information and learning good information related to teaching and technology from my peers and experts on the internet. The only problem seems to be the time needed to stay on top of it. However, tools like RSS readers and Tweetdeck do aid in making the upkeep more manageable.

PowerPoint Presentation: Cleaning Your Ear Molds

I liked this activity because it gave me the chance to play around with Google Docs a little bit more than I was able to last week. I chose to create my powerpoint on Google Docs because it is always much easier to use technology that I am already familiar with. In addition, I prefer having as much information as possible stored in one spot. Therefore, the idea that I can go to one site and get my resume, my powerpoint, etc. is much more appealing than having to travel to several different types of sites to access different documents that I have created.

I chose to do my presentation on cleaning the ear-mold portion of the hearing aid because this is something that my students will need to become familiar with. Often parents clean children's ear-molds for them because it is easier and faster for the parent to do it than for them to wait for the child to figure it out. However, being able to take care of their equipment will give these children a sense of responsibility. In addition, it isn't always something that their parents will be able to do for them. Eventually they will need to be responsible for the cleaning, and school is a great environment for students to practice this and learn the proper way to clean their ear-molds without damaging them. This is one of the many skills that deaf and hard of hearing children need to learn in order to become independent individuals!

Publicity through Technology

Original Image: "[Paper]tiger James {Explored}"
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For my job, I work on planning events for the University Activities Board. The next event that my committee is putting on, is the Rudy Currence concert, with special Guest Sunny Side up. This event will take place on Friday, October 23. The concert begins at 9:00 at the International Center, and doors will open at 8:30. Rudy Currence is R&B style singer who has written songs for Mya and has a song on the Minority Report soundtrack. Sunnyside Up, on the other hand, is an acoustic Indie-Pop duo, formed by Michigan State students.

Now that I have told you a little bit about the event, I would like to tell you why technology has made publicizing this event so much easier. We now have a UAB twitter and facebook page that will present information about this event. The facebook page, not only allows me to invite my friends to the event, but it also allows all of them to invite their friends, sending the invitation out to a much wider range of people than I could do by myself. Twitter essentially does the same thing by allowing anyone who gets our tweets to retweat the information to their friends.

We also have a UAB email listserv, which gets sent out once a week on Mondays. This allows those individuals who are on our email list to see the events for the upcoming week, with a little blurb about each event, and decide which ones they think that they might be interested in participating in.

In addition, I have learned to use Publisher to create posters that can be printed and posted around campus to pique the attention of students in the residence halls and on their way to class. We also use computer software to create the table tents that are placed on the tables in the cafeterias, in order to inform students of what events are taking place on campus each week.

Finally, we have a webpage that students can visit to get this information: uabevents.com. Using all of these different facets of media, we are able to use technology to get information out to a much broader group of studens. However, all of these ways of getting the word out involve computers, either to send out information over the web, or to design hard copies of posters and signs that will be distributed around campus. Therefore, it would be very difficult to reach such a large population of students without the use of technology!

Google Docs

Original Image: "The duckies invade Google"
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I think that google docs could be a really exciting piece of technology to use in my future classroom. It would be an excellent way to work on the writing process. For example, students in the classroom could post their prewriting, and then their first draft of their papers or stories that they are writing. Then other students could view these documents and add their own comments about what they think would make their peer's writing better. This would mean that students could be working on these projects at any point during the day, even outside of the classroom, because they would always have access to their peer's work.

I love the idea of students being able to collaborate on a piece of writing. In this way, through the use of google docs, two students could be writing a story together. For instance, they could each write alternate endings to a story, and, on the document itself, they could have a conversation about which ending they wanted to use and why.

This would also be a great tool for teamwork because the teacher can see who is posting what material and when. This can help the teacher to monitor that every student is pulling their own weight. However, I do think that it is important for teachers to be constantly monitoring student's work while they are using google docs. Because students can post whatever they want to the internet using this feature, it would be easy for them to tear down another student's work, and that is not a way that this technology should be used in the classroom.

Also, before teachers allow students to collaborate through the use of Google Docs in the classroom, they might want to have a conversation with their students about how to give good feedback and constructive criticism. It is always easier to tear someone down if you don't have to look at them face to face. Instead, you just have to type something on to the web. That is the one precaution that I would want to take when using google docs.

Breakfast for All Students Program

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At my placement for TE 401, my teacher was telling us about a new program where every child recieves breakfast each morning. She was unhappy because there is already an extremely low amount of time that students are actually being educated in academics during the year, once you take out specials like gym, art, library, etc. This program would take out another half hour every morning from the time that is allotted for teachers to teach their own curriculum throughout the day. When you add up a half an hour, every day, for an entire year, this is a lot of time that could be spent teaching one of the core subject areas.

I understand this outlook, but I can also see the other side of the argument. Food is one of student's most basic needs. Many of these children do not come from the best homes, and they may not be getting breakfast before they are sent off to school. If a child comes to school without their most basic needs being met, how can we expect them to function for an entire school day, and put forth their best effort? I think that we need to tend to children's most basic needs before we can move on to teaching them.

Also, it seems like there could be a way to be productive while letting the children eat their breakfast. For example, my teacher reads a story to the students every day when they return from lunch. Maybe she could use the time while the students are eating to read this story, and she could use that time after lunch to tend to other academic matters. What are your opinions on this issue?

Google Earth

Original Image: "NIN Tour on Google Earth"
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I have never really had the chance to play around with Google Earth before, and as a result, I always thought that it was just a fun application. I never really considered that it may have some technological relevance in the classroom. However, now I can see that there are endless ways that google earth can be used to enhance classroom learning.

In the most basic way, if you were teaching young students about their community, you could pull up an interactive map of the community in which students could move the cursor around and see the different buildings that can be found in their community such as their own house, the supermarket, their school, etc. Students can even travel back in time to see what their community looked like in the past.

However, Google Earth is no longer just limited to viewing the earth. If you were learning about the moon, for example, Google Earth would be a great tool to suppliment what you were teaching children in the classroom. Imagine if you could give students homework that was to go play on Google Earth on their computer. This is something that is interactive and fun. If students enjoy the homework that you are giving them, then you aren't going to have to fight them every day about doing completing it.

The moon feature of Google Earth is really cool because you can explore the moon with real planning charts that were used during the Appolo missions. You can also see all of the artifacts that humans have left on the moon, and view the spacecrafts that we have sent there. You can even zoom in to see any of the Appolo landing sites on the moon. Once you arrive there you can see real video of Neil Armstrong on the moon and actual photographs taken by astronauts themselves. Obviously, most of your students will never have the chance to travel to the moon, but using this technology they can see what the surface of the moon looks like right from the comfort of their own classroom. I think that this would make the moon more realistic for my students. Otherwise it may be difficult for students to make connections with something that they have only seen at a very far distance in the night's sky. Similarly, if you are learning about space in your classroom, you can use Google Earth to explore stars, the Milky Way, and other locations within our universe.

There are also some really cool features of Google Earth that teachers might want to use with your students if they are learning about Mars. For example, students can see what Mars looks like today, but they can also go back in time and see maps of what early scientists thought that mars looked like. They can then compare and contrast what we know about Mars today to what we thought that we knew about Mars in the past. Students can also follow the path of the rover, Opportunity, which is still on Mars today. This is great if you are teaching your students about different space missions that NASA has been involved in. What I love about this tool is that if you want to learn more, you can click on the travelers guide icons, and an information box will pop up to give you more in depth information about what you are viewing. Children can also look at high-resolution photos that have been taken by NASA spacecrafts as recently as a few hours ago. Picture like these are tools that will engage student learning, and you would be hard pressed to find such up to date information on any other website.

The oceans are another science topic that Google Earth could assist in learning. This section includes National Geographic videos of the ocean, and videos of Cuusteau's torch-lit journey through the ocean. Students can also learn about sea creatures that live in particular parts of the ocean, and take quizes to assess their knowledge of what they already know about particular aspects of the ocean. Children can follow the path of an actual whale-shark or take a look at the Marienna Trench, which is one of the deepest spots in the ocean.

Finally, if you were taking students on a class trip, this could be a very useful tool to use. For example, before we went to Washington D.C. in eighth grade, we could have viewed different 3-D images of the White House or the Pentagon. My high school foreign language class took a trip to Europe our senior year, and it would have been really cool to have taken some 3-D tours of the city that we were going to or some of the historical buildings that we would be seeing. This would have given us a way to get our feet wet, and to get excited about the trip. In addition, it woul have given us a better idea of what to expect, before the trip.

I believe that Google Earth has so many applications in the classroom because you can use it in its most basic form for younger children, or you can explore its more complex functions when the children grow older and the topics that they are learning also become more complex. The last feature of this program that I found really was that students have the ability to label and record the places that they have traveled within Google Earth. Students can then take the experiences that they are learning about in the classroom home, in order to show their parents, and they can be proud of what they are learning in school.

In order to use this technology, I, as a teacher would need to understand how it works, in order to teach my students how to use it. I would then need to narrow down the content area so that I knew if I would be using the ocean application, the moon application, etc. I wouldn't want to overwhelm my students with all of the information that I just presented above at once. In addition, I would need to have knowledge of the content area because I need to be able to answer my student's question about the content that they are seeing on screen, and also because I need to be able to evaluate that all of the information that they are gathering from Google Earth is accurate. Finally, I need to know how to teach this content knowledge because I cannot solely rely on technology to teach my children a specific subject. It can supplement the learning process, but technology cannot be responsible for being the entire teacher on a particular subject.