Challenges

As I leave this class I am very excited. I am not as intimated of technology as I was when I entered. I have learned so much about different programs that are out there that I never even would have considered. It had never occured to me that their were alternatives to power point or excel that you did not have to buy. One of the funniest things that I learned was how easy everything is (almost anyway). I would not have set up a blog or a wiki thinking that they would take a lot of time. I was wrong. One of the biggest challenges that I will face as I am leaving this class will be to remember to incorporate multimedia into my lessons. Because I am a digital immigrant I have to conciously think about how to use it and incorporate it into my lessons. Hopefully it will get easier over time. Thanks Dr. K for the experience.

PBL for designing multi media

I chose the scenerio as the high school English teacher. I would incoporate blogging into the curriculum as an open forum for assigned readings. I would help the student (after I investigated and learned about them myself) set up a blog of their own. After that I would assign readings and ask the students to post to them. I would also ask them to respond to some of their classmates blogs. Since most high School english classes are only fifty minutes long this would give the students more oppurtunity for interaction. As far as one to one laptops that would greatly change the ability to teach the students about blogging and much more. It would open up a whole new world a tech. world. With this new availability of the laptops we would explore all of the web 2.0 tools counting different blogs, creating a class wiki space, finding other options succh as zoho instead of power point. I think that this would be a great experience for the students as well as the teacher.

Learning from experience

Think back to an educational experience that you had that was NOT well designed. If you now had the chance to re-design that experience using multimedia in your lesson design, what would you do differently and WHY? Remember to include some ideas about assessing multimedia learning in your design.

That is the question for this week. Well I can think of one that is very recent. I had this one instructor who is absolutely wonderful. He is so knowledgeable about the subjects that he teaches but he will often lecture for around one hour straight. It might not be so bad if he would walk around or somethin but he would sit and just read. Yes straight read from notes. The information was very interesting but the average attention span for humans is about twenty minutes. No matter how much you were interested your mind would wander after that you were pretty much useless for the practical aspect of the class. I feel that had he used power point just to supplement the highlights and then lectured on the rest anything with a visual would have kept the classes attention. It wasn't just me. If I would ask any student for notes from the last half I noticed that all of us lost it around the same time. The notes would just stop. But during the practical part of the class we all learned so much from this guy. Like I said he was extremely knowledgeable. I have to wonder if he hated the lecture part as much as we did.

Current News

What’s in the news? Feb. 19, 2008
Teenagers Lead Lessons in Technology
Baltimoresun.com
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/education/k12/bal-ho.technology03feb03,0,6364191.story
Summary: This article is about high school student’s teaching fellow students and community citizens alike about computer technology. These students are very tech savvy and they enjoy holding classes after school hours to share their knowledge with other people. They teach things like photo shop, game design, web design, and programs like MS office. There is a middle school nearby and the students are able to come to the high school to learn the computer programs and advance their skills for when they start high school.
Response: This concept is very enlightening. The idea of students helping other students and adults to learn new skills can be very beneficial. It will not only benefit the “learners” but it will benefit the “teachers” as well by reinforcing their knowledge. It will force them to have a complete understanding of the subject in order to teach others about it. The must also really enjoy what they are doing to take time out of their schedules to help other people.
My View: I absolutely love this whole concept. I feel that it benefits everyone who is involved. The students that are teaching are gaining leadership abilities as well as strengthening their skills and helping people in the process. I feel that it is also bridging the gap between digital natives and digital immigrants. (This concept was introduced by Marc Prensky)
Questions: Is this program effective enough to introduce it to more schools? Would more neighborhoods be as receptive to a program that is similar? Could they take it a step further by having high school students go to elementary or middle schools to teach those students?

Web 2.0 tools in the classroom

I think that these tools will be very useful. I like the aspect of the Wiki page and that parents can access it to keep up with their children. I also like that the students can access it that whole concept can open up many doors for students and teachers as far as communication is concerned. The gliffy map was also very cool. I definately liked it better than putting the ideas down on paper because everything was movable. There was no erasing and redoing. I still have alot to learn on these tools I can't wait until I have more time to just sit down and mess with them.

Multimedia Projects in education

In Ivers and Barron book Multimedia projects in education they introduce so many ideas for Multimedia projects in the classroom. When I was in school I never did a Multimedia project (until college) I know kinda of showing my age. I really like the DDD-E model decide, design, develop, and evaluate. The whole concept will help both my students and myself as I will be learning with them. The whole step by step process with evaluation after each step is very good. I tend to jump into things so this will make me step back a little bit. The ideas that they gave for the teams was also very good I did not like it in school when they would just assign teams with no thought to how they would work together. In the book they give you many ideas about how to organize as far as skills, interests, and strenghts with the project. I am definately going to keep this book as a reference.

Learning Styles

I was a little shocked at my results I was pretty even across the board. I have never taken a learning style test before (interesting). As for the multimedia I am almost always nervous learning something new about technology. And then afterwards I can't understand why I was nervous to begin with. A perfect example is this blog. When the teacher first told us that we had to create a blog I was a little apprehensive. Then three steps later I was done. Then I just felt silly for being nervous. And for the last part which multimedia do I want to learn well as much as I can truthfully. Just about anything that will be useful for me and my future students.

Thoughts on Digital natives-Digital immigrants

After reading both articles I have come to accept that I am a digital immigrant. Many of the children and teens in my family are actually a mixture of both. It was very interesting talking to my 19 year old niece and getting her input on technology today. I agree with many points in Marc's articles. I am a little confused as to why people would be hesitant to try out new learning games. I have played many with all of the younger generations in my family such as HI HO cherry OH, hang man, boggle, match games, etc. What difference does it make if they are board games, pencil and paper, or vidio based. I am beginning to feel very lucky with my daughters school as they have computers in every classroom. The students use them every day for test taking and game playing. My daughter will often come home with a new website that she wants to go to. These websites are all math, reading, writing, and science based. When My nephew visits on the weekends he will go to the first in math site and show off his stickers that he has won for his class. He is in Third grade and doing probability and statistics answering questions that I have just had in STAT. On the other side at the school that I am doing field observation at the only computer in the classroom is for the teacher. The students do have a computer lab class once a week per class. The teacher may be practicing a form of digital teaching though as most of the activities will last about fifteen minutes or so then she will switch the students into different groups. They may work on reading and writing for an hour but no mmore than fifteen minutes per activity or game. My daughters Gymnastics class is the same way.