Inspiration!!!!!!

I used inspiration for the first time to make my mind map. My mind map is on the causes of the American Revolution. I really enjoyed using inspiration. It is easy to use and really does add a new element to your graphic organizer. Graphic organizer are wonderful toos for students to use. It gives them a chance to see everything laid out right in from of them. They can sit there and read about the causes and some will make the connection. Others need to see it laid out right in front of them and Inspiration does this in a colorful manner. The pictures and different colors will draw the student's attention to it. Also, being able to add hyperlinks is wonderful. Now when students are sitting there looking and studying the graphic organizer they click on the link and read more about things that really interest them.

Meeting February 23, 2009

Tonight's class covered alot of different topics. I found it to be extremly informative and I learned alot. Digital literacy to me means more then simply reading and writing. It means that students must be able to look at information on the internet and be able to determine the validity of what it is that they are meaning and be able to synthesize the information. Comprehnesion is simply not enough in today's technological age, students must be able to apply the information to solve problems. Digital Citizenship covers a wide range of informtaion. One particular part that interested me was the net ettiqute. We need to teacher our students that just because they are on the internet the normal rules of society still apply. Also, we need to educate our students to be safe on the internet. The internet is a great tool, but unfortunately some people use it for the wrong reasons.

Dr. S's ppt on web 2.0 was very interesting. Web 2.0 allows all of us to work collabratively together. Everyone can publish items on the internet on subject, there is no one authority giving information. Multiple people can give information on any subject. Also, you can set up many different types of social networks to interact with people. Also, I liked the fact that she mentions that we need to move away from the industrial age, style of thinking. Assembly line and finished product. We need to engage students and challenge them to find answers on their own. The reason we need to do this is to prepare them for the types of jobs that they will have in the future.

Group 1's powerpoint was very well done. The only negative I saw, was that the resources were not done in APA style. However, what I did like learning about was th netnany. It reminds me of the chaperone mode on a cell phone, with this you can tract your child and where they are at. With netnanny you can see what your children are doing on the internet.

Web Site Evaluations

Steven Zurlnick
Reflection – Web evaluations
02/22/09
Literacy and Technology

This was an interesting experience. I have never really stopped to think about all of the different things you should be checking to make sure a site valid. Usually I will find a site and if the information I need seems ok, I will just go ahead and use. However, I now realize that there is more to it, then just a brief overview. You want to consider who created the site, when was it created and last updated, is the site well put together, is it easily navigated and other such things. To me it is much like evaluating research material. You need to make sure that the book or journal article that you are using is up to date, the author is an authority, that is from a reputable source and other such things.

Group Meeting 2/15/209

On Sunday night we meet for nearly 3 hours discussing class and assingments. I think that Moodle is a great tool, yet still has some bugs to be worked out. At times it moves very slow and assingments sometimes donot have a place to be uploaded. Also, I think it would be better if it scrolled from the newest week to the oldest, rather then oldest to newest.

Dr. S. stopped in to see our group tonight and stated that we are doing an excellent job and are ahead of the other groups. I think this is because we use our group time wisely, we review everything for the week and join all the required groups together. As I have stated before we are always willing to stay on longer then planned, in order to get things done. We should have no problem at all reaching the 15 required hours. We also picked our topics for the final project. I choose to do whiteboards, because I think that they are a great tool. I tried to use mine a few times a week. The kids love it and they are more engaged when I use the whiteboard, then at any other time.

Finally, we watched the video for week 5. It was interesting to get a parent's perspective on school, since I am not a parent. It is interesting to see the ways that we each view each other. I think that we as teachers need to realize that the nuclear family has changed. There are more single parent families out there then before, also we live in a materialistic world so more often then not both parents work. Children will spend more hours with us then their actual parents, so we need to step up to the challenge and teach students more then just school. We need to teach them life lessons and prepare them for a digital age and technological world that awaits them.

2nd Meeting

On Wed. Feb 11th we had our third meeting. We attempted to start working on our group wiki project, however we discovered that we needed a passcode. So instead we worked on our group letterpop advertising the online text book. I think the online textbook is great, it is in depth and provides alot of great links and ideas to make your classroom more technoloically friendly. Letterpop is really userfriendly. I have used it in the past with great success. In fact it is so easy I am thinking about having my 6th graders create a letterpop advertising the book that we are reading in English. The book is Hatchet and I think that they can really come up with some great ideas. My group is fantastic and we work very hard. We were online for almost 3 hours working on our letterpop.

1st Class Meeting

Our first class meeting went pretty well. Our group works well togther and I feel that we did a really nice job with our group name, motto, and the in class assignment on the Technology Standards and creating a tool box. I had standard number 2 and one of the things I thought of was a webquest. I felt that a webquest would fit this standard, because it allows students to search and discover on their own. Also, you can tailor a webquest for different groups or on an individual basis. You can have different individuals or groups work on different parts of the webquest based on their ability level or learning style. In groups you can put some stronger students working with some of the weaker students.

The major difference I see between web 1.0 and web 2.0 is that in web 1.0 users were unable to interact with the website. There author of the site was the authority and you took what they said as fact. Now in the web 2.0 generation we can communicate and comment back and forth. Web 2.0 allows for a more collaborative effort, then the web 1.0 did.

The net generation is the generation of students that are born into technology. They have always known technology and do not know what life is like without this technology. They are different from previous learners in that they donot strive for knowledge, they have knowledge at their fingertips on almost any device you can imagine. What they yearn to know is how to synthesize it and to understand it on a deeper level. The implications for us as teachers is that we need to be prepared to introduce technology to our classrooms. Technology can no longer be a side show, it must be a part of the classroom enviornment and incorporated into our lessons. Failure to do this, will fail to prepare student's to be productive members of society.

The six standards for technology is: 1. Creativity and Innovation 2. Communication and Collaboration 3. Research and Information Fluency 4. Critical Think, Problem Solving, and Decision Making 5. Digital Citizenship
6. Technology Operations and Concepting.
I think that younger teachers are more prepared to meet these standards then veteran teachers. Veteran teachers are not willing to give up the control of the classroom in order to allow these standards to be adquetly meet. Younger teachers are more integrated to technology and are more likely to incoporate these standards. The one other factor playing into this is money. If a district does not have the money, they will not have the technological tools to incorporate these standards.

2nd group meeting

Today we meet up to make sure that we were all set for the coming week. Everyone seems to be getting more comfortable with moodle and navigating between all the different sites and links. We also watched the video about the Net Generation. The net generation is students who have grown up with technology. Technology has always been apart of their life. The question asked throughout the video, and it seems to me the theme of the first 2 weeks, is how how do we reach these students without using techonlogy? We as educators cannot look at technology as simply something else to do on the side that takes away from what we need to cover. We need to use technology to assist us in covering the material. If we do this we will more effectively reach students. I truly believe that you must make learning relevant to their lives or them simply will not learn.

A Tech Savy Teacher is.....

To me A Tech Savy Teacher is like Micheanglo with a paint brush. What I mean by that is imagine what Micheanglo would be like without a paint and a canvass? He would not have been able to paint the materpiece that was the sistine chapel. Our students are our canvass and technology our paint brush. Combine the two and we can create masterpieces that will be able to function in our technological age! We need to relate material to students on their terms and the language they understand now, is the language of technology. If we fail to be technologically savy, then we fail our students.

The First Week

The first week for me was basically a refresher. I have taken two previous courses with Dr. S and I am familar with the process of uploading files to moodle, Tapped In, De.lis.ous. making my own website, blog, and Wiki. I was actually suprised by how much I rembered! The most memorable part of my learning this week was the video that discussed moving away from simple memorization of facts, no that students can get information is at the touch of their fingers. We must teach them to synthasize facts and prepare them for 21st centruy jobs, not the jobs of the past.





So the question that I feel I need to answer is; what do I need to do to be prepared to teach in this digital age????? I think the most important thing I need to do is to keep up to date with changes in technology. There are so many different things that we as teachers can do with technology. However; in order to do that we must be willing as teachers to give up some control. That is a challenge for many of us. We must allow our students to explore and learn on their own. Students do not need to be sitting in a chair listening to us lecture and memorizing a bunch of facts. They can get those facts sent straight to them throught, personal computers, labtops, phones, pda devices and so many different forms of technology. What we have to teach our students is how to syntheize this information, analysis it and put it to use in productive ways.

My meeting with my group was very interesting. I have come to realize that I need to get a microphone. My entire group had a microphone and were talking and exploring other sites. It was difficult for me to contribute since I had to type on the Wiziq site, while everyone else was on the moodle site. It is amazing how we can all be in different locations talking on the same server. When used correctly, ie. respecting netique, talking when its your turn, listening when it isnot; this technology can allow for an amazing learning experience. We can communicate what we each see and are learning from different websites. Also, I anticipate in our class meetings that we will be able to see different presentation and hear the student's present as well. This experience will allow us a glimpse into the future of teaching, as anticipate technology improving and classes eventually being completely online.