Reflection/Suggestion

During this class I learned about many useful emerging technologies that can be utilized in the classroom. The discussions, projects, and presentations were all very beneficial. I enjoyed being able to share links and ideas using our blogs. I think this is a valuable asset to any classroom. I look forward to implementing this technology in my future classroom.

I have a suggestion to anyone who feels like they will be using blogs in their classes. I feel like livejournal.com is very user-friendly and easy to learn. I think this site would be good to use and perhaps even more beneficial to a class than blogger. Using this site instead of blogger, allows you to have a "friend" page, which means you subscribe to other people's blogs and it shows it all to you on one page. Anytime you comment on someones posts, they receive an email and they can comment back to you in a chain. You are able to see the thread of comments in the order they occurred. You receive an e-mail for each comment and are alerted when you receive one. Basically you can reply to another person's comment, which creates a conversation in a way. There are also things called communities on livejournal. Communities are basically areas for people with similar interests to post blog entries about a certain topic. You can ask each other questions and help each other out. This can be useful in a classroom when talking about certain subjects. You can also make the blogs private so only the students in your class can view them and post comments. This is just something to keep in mind when using blogs in the classroom.
This is what a thread of comments looks like in livejournal. You can see the chain of events, who commented first, then someone commented on their comment and so on. Every user gets a little icon as well to identify themselves.

I hope everyone enjoys the rest of their summer vacations and good luck in your next school year!

ASSURE Lesson Plans

Today our ASSURE lesson plans were due. I found it interesting to write a lesson in this format. I am so used to writing such long lesson plans that are required of the college. Many times our lesson plans as an undergrad would go up to ten pages, which is extremely unrealistic as a teacher in the real world. The ASSURE method seemed like an efficient way of writing them. What did everyone else think?I wrote about the class tour podcast for my lesson plan. I think it would be such a fun project for kids to do.

Podcast Creation Guide/Upload Services

Another useful resource I found while researching podcasting, was the podcast creation guide. It is a PDF file made by Apple Inc. I recommend educators download this and take a look at it. It tells you step by step how to create a podcast. It also includes images of the equipment involved. I have uploaded it to sendspace.com for you.

Sendspace.com is a website where you can upload files for a certain period of time for free. These are useful for sharing files with other users, or if you are formatting your computer and you need a site to temporarily hold your files. They will stay uploaded for about a week, depending on the site. If you are interested in downloading the podcast PDF file, simply click on the link I have provided below. When you click on that link, there is a flashing red arrow pointing at the button you need to click for the download. Most free upload services typically look like this.

Podcast Creation Guide:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/nja4sh

Free upload services you may want to check out:
megaupload.com
yousendit.com
mediafire.com
sendspace.com

Podcasts in Education

While doing research for my PowerPoint presentation on educational podcasts, I found many useful resources for educators. These links include general podcast information, podcast search engines, and educational podcast web sites. I never really thought about all of the possibilities of podcasts in the classroom. My favorite idea for using podcasts in class, was to have the students create a walking tour of their town for visitors to download. The students can have fun learning the history of their town while incorporating technology in the classroom.

General Podcast Information:
http://www.how-to-podcast-tutorial.com/21-podcast-hosting.htm
http://www.edupodder.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcasting

Podcast Search Engines:
http://www.podcast.net/
http://digg.com/podcasts/view/education
http://www.digitalpodcast.com/browse-educational-20-1.html
http://www.podcasting-station.com/showrss.php?category=Educational%20Podcasts
http://www.podcastalley.com/podcast_genres.php?pod_genre_id=7
http://www.podcastingnews.com/forum/link_6.htm
http://www.epnweb.org/

Education Podcasts:
http://blog.podcasting.oln.org/
http://digg.com/podcasts/view/education
http://www.podcastforteachers.org/
http://www.educational-feeds.com/
http://www.digitalpodcast.com/browse-educational-20-1.html
http://www.idiotvox.com/Podcasts_About_Education_19.html
http://ask.metafilter.com/31426/Educational-podcasts
http://www.apple.com/education/products/ipod/podcasting.html
http://www.podcastingnews.com/forum/link_6.htm
http://www.epnweb.org/

HTML

The Nvu program we were using yesterday was a simplified way of creating a webpage. It made it so much easier to do a layout then using traditional html. Since html wasn't really involved in making our websites, I thought that these websites might be interesting to check out. You can use html to design your own blog format, make your blogs fancier, and create your own websites. These are websites that will give you a basic idea of how to use html and what it looks like. It is not hard once you get the hang of it.

blog html
basic html intro
basic structure tags
basic html commands

Useful WebQuest Links

This WebQuest assignment was a little difficult to get started. While I was looking around on the web, I found some useful sites that others might be interested in. There were some good WebQuests that you can use in your classroom, and suggestions on how to make them.
Links:
WebQuest.Org
This site was good for learning how to make them and it also had a good search engine.

Science WebQuests
Math WebQuests
History WebQuests
English WebQuests

Creating WebQuests

Creating WebQuests is a new process for me. I just wanted to share a website I found today that may help you write your own.
Design Process

This rubric might also be helpful for evaluating the webquest that you create.
Instructor's Rubric

Good Luck!

Educational Benefits of Blogs

I was beginning to wonder more about uses for blogs in the classroom. There are many ways of going about blogging in an elementary school. Each student could have their own blog (this would give them a sense of ownership) or there could be a classroom blog (this could create a sense of community). Overall I believe students would be very excited to participate in a classroom blog. If a student has a question in class that the teacher can’t answer right away, the teacher could update the blog with the answer, or good references for the student to use to find out for themselves. Or perhaps even the student with the original question could go home, research it (if they have internet/computer access) and post the answer on the blog. Teachers could use blogs to communicate their lesson plans or ideas. It can be used for the class website as well. This website (Blogs in the Classroom) gave some examples of why blogs can be useful in the classroom.

Some examples from this site include:

• Highly motivating to students, especially those who otherwise might not become participants in classrooms.
• Excellent opportunities for students to read and write.
• Effective forums for collaboration and discussion.
• Powerful tools to enable scaffolded learning or mentoring to occur.

Blogs in the classroom can also help with:

• Discussions- A class blog opens the opportunity for students to discuss topics outside of the classroom. With a blog, every person has an equal opportunity to share their thoughts and opinions. Students have time to be reactive to one another and reflective. Teachers can also bring together a group of knowledgeable individuals for a given unit of study for students to network and conference with on a blog.

• Student Portfolios- Blogs present, organize, and protect student work as digital portfolios. As older entries are archived, developing skills and progress may be analyzed more conveniently. Additionally, as students realize their efforts will be published, they are typically more motivated to produce better writing. Teachers and peers may conference with a student individually on a developing work, and expert or peer mentoring advice can be easily kept for future reference.

This site might also be helpful to educators:
Educational Blogs

Blog Search Engines

Since we learned so much about different blog sites that are offered, I wanted to learn more how to search them. I figured other people's blogs could be very beneficial to a classroom. There are science, math, english, history, and technology blogs. You just need to know where to look for them. Here are my suggestions after researching many blog search engines:
http://blogsearch.google.com/
http://www.ask.com/?tool=bls
http://www.bloggernity.com/
http://www.blogsearchengine.com/
http://www.blog-search.com/

Class Blog List

I was trying to figure out how to make a class list of blog titles so I can quickly view them, so I went to Dashboard (which is basically your home page for blogger.com and it lets you edit your settings). I chose to add a link list which means I was able to post the class' blog titles so I can easily see them on my own blog page.
Steps:
Go to blogger.com
Go to Dashboard (button on the upper right side of page)
Go to Manage: Layout
Click Add a Page Element
Click top right choice: Link List
Where it says New Site URL, paste in one class members' blog title at a time
Click Add Link
Keep adding class' blog titles one at a time until complete
Then the list of blogs will show up on your own blog
I also added a useful links section to my blog.
I just like having the list handy, so maybe it will benefit you too.

Subscription Icon

I was trying to learn more about blogger at home because I still find this site to be confusing. We used (bloglines) in class today to basically organize our subscriptions. When I got home I added a little icon to my blog that would make it easier for people to subscribe to it. It is the little orange icon (I put a picture of it in this entry) that says subscribe in a reader. If you click that, it will ask you to pick a program you use for your subscriptions (we use bloglines in class). If people put this little icon on their page, it might be easier for the class to subscribe to blogs and to understand. I did it through feedburner and it walks you through the steps, so it was pretty easy to do. I hope someone finds this useful. Good luck!

Blogs

I never really thought about how useful blogs could be to the education world. I am interested in learning more about the educational opportunities of blogs and news feeds. I am familiar with livejournal.com which is very user friendly. I have been reading a blog about a project called "No Impact Man" which is basically one man's journey to try and be more environmentally friendly. At the end of each entry it says "Subscribe to this feed" and I have it feed into my livejournal that I have for personal use. While exploring this blog, I found an interesting site that describes syndication and feedburner. This "FAQ" site may be helpful for people that are new to blogs or feeds in general: Feed 101
Here is another link (Commercial Publications) that briefly mentions the XML and RSS we talked about in class. It also gives a sampling of important newspapers and companies that put out their own blogs/feeds.