What specific plans do you have for implementing technology in an educational setting as a result of what you have learned in 5720?
I think that I've learned a lot about different types of technologies and ideas on how to implement them in my classroom. I love the idea of using social networking to communicate with students. While I currently have a Facebook class page, it does have some limitations. The biggest drawbacks that I've found are that not all my students use Facebook and that it's blocked from school. The fact that it's blocked prevents me from being able to go in to the page and update it at school; it also means that students can't access it if they have a question or need to refer to the page for any reason. Many of my students have pointed out that Twitter has several advantages: it can be viewed from school, students can receive the updates as a text message on their phone, and it keeps everything short and sweet for updates, reminders, extra credit offers, etc.
I also love the program that I worked with for the final technology project. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that there's a time lapse from when I finish the project to when it is posted (that information isn't anywhere until you get ready to post). So that's something that I'll definitely have to warn my students about, but I'm thinking of using Museum Box for my students when we read a play. I can see if they've picked up the information without having to make them write a paper on the play.
As a librarian, I can see offering these resources to classroom teachers regardless of what subject they teach. Museum Box and social networking can be used in any subject, and so can creating a website. I think a great recommendation could be to create a blog from the point of view of a character in a story or historical figure.
This class has made me excited about incorporating more technology into my class and to keep trying out new sites to see what they can provide. Here's to the future!
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Thursday, July 28, 2011
The Job of Organizing
Organizing books and materials used to be in the domain of professionally trained catalogers and indexers. Now, through Web 2.0, it is in the hands of everyday "folk." What are the implications of this trend for librarians? Also, for additional food for thought, go to your Delicious site and examine your list of tags. In your opinion, are these tags more or less helpful than traditional subject headings?
I think that organizing now is similar to the way that Wikipedia works - it has become a global "think tank" as opposed to something structured and following an exact set of rules that few people know. Honestly, other than librarians, how many people can tell you what the difference is between Dewey Decimal number 918.04 and 981.04? Even then, unless you use these numbers a lot, most librarians would have to look up what the numbers after the decimal point represent (918.04 are books on South America travel and 981.04 is 19th century Brazilian history). Tagging though, is much less librarian-ish and much more Barnes and Noble's-ish. And after all, who doesn't love a good bookstore?
Honestly, I find social bookmarking tags easier to navigate. Ask anyone who knows me about my book collection - I could NEVER sort it by a format like the Dewey Decimal system. Most of my collection is by genre except if I have a lot of an author - then there's a group just for that specific author (so, I have a bunch of sci/fi and fantasy books, but all my Peter S. Beagle books are grouped together as opposed to being alphabetized by title). This means that, while my boyfriend can't find a thing in my collection, I have no problem at all. It's the same with social bookmarking. I can organize my sites my own way and others can view, borrow, and find sites that I like. And that can, in turn, help lead users to more (potentially useful) sites.
I think that organizing now is similar to the way that Wikipedia works - it has become a global "think tank" as opposed to something structured and following an exact set of rules that few people know. Honestly, other than librarians, how many people can tell you what the difference is between Dewey Decimal number 918.04 and 981.04? Even then, unless you use these numbers a lot, most librarians would have to look up what the numbers after the decimal point represent (918.04 are books on South America travel and 981.04 is 19th century Brazilian history). Tagging though, is much less librarian-ish and much more Barnes and Noble's-ish. And after all, who doesn't love a good bookstore?
Honestly, I find social bookmarking tags easier to navigate. Ask anyone who knows me about my book collection - I could NEVER sort it by a format like the Dewey Decimal system. Most of my collection is by genre except if I have a lot of an author - then there's a group just for that specific author (so, I have a bunch of sci/fi and fantasy books, but all my Peter S. Beagle books are grouped together as opposed to being alphabetized by title). This means that, while my boyfriend can't find a thing in my collection, I have no problem at all. It's the same with social bookmarking. I can organize my sites my own way and others can view, borrow, and find sites that I like. And that can, in turn, help lead users to more (potentially useful) sites.
Friday, July 22, 2011
The Machine is Us/ing Us
For those of you who haven't seen this, there is an awesome video on Youtube by a cultural anthropology professor about the internet. In fact, here's the video:
Lately (as in class, not in the news) we've been learning about "Web 2.0" - what it is and what (if anything) differentiates it from "Web 1.0". In the book by Courtney (Library 2.0 and Beyond), the first chapter opens with a debate about what Web 2.0 is. Is it really just the web that we watched develop but now all fancied up? Is it being able to do things online (social network sites, online document storage, etc.) that 8 or 10 years ago wasn't possible? Or is it a combination of us as users and the web?
This video, I think, has a very apt title. The machine -- the internet web machine -- is both us, the users, and the internet uses us to improve upon itself. It feels slightly like The Matrix, but without all the computers trying to kill people stuff. Here's how I see it breakdown, and why I think the title works brilliantly.
Part 1: The Machine is Using Us - in the textbook, there are several points made about how the web was designed essentially to connect people. O'Reilly and Berners-Lee both make this point, although they do so in different ways. That connection could be with other people, with ideas, with information - the end doesn't matter as much as the fact that the web was designed to be a facilitator. In order to facilitate the movement on the web better, the "machine" has to learn its users. By learning what we're looking for and how we tend to search for our information, the machine (the search engines/the internet/the "machine") can facilitate the gathering of said information in a more efficient manner. This is how the machine "uses us". Many of the search engines are meant to be intuitive when it comes to looking for information - that's why when you mess up your spelling in a Google search it can be like your like English teacher and say "Did you mean ..." I never thought I'd actually be scolded by Google, but it asks me all the time if I really wanted to look for whatever I typed in to the search engine.
Part 2: The Machine is Us - obviously, someone had to program everything. Tim Bennners-Lee got us started with the www, but it takes manpower to create something as monolithic as the internet. We, the users of the internet, helped with the task. Many of the algorithms that the internet uses are meant to analyze what we do. But someone had to create the program. The internet is a quick study, but it's not that good. And that's where we as users and creators come in. Every time someone creates a new page or makes a new program on the internet, we shape the machine. There's a part of us in what create, and therefore the machine is a reflection of us, making it a version of us.
I think this was pointed out very nicely in Professor Wesch's video. He takes the audience on a ride through our most recent history from paper and pencil to typing on a computer to the creation of web page programming. I think the ending of the video (starting from the 3:20 mark on) is very explicit in why the video has it's name. According to a statistic in the video, people click on 100 billion web links a day. That's billion, with a B. That's 100 billion links that we've looked at, created, potentially commented on, and taught the web to connect to other links. If we could link even a fraction of that quantity of information we'd be geniuses. Instead, we collectively have helped to shape a system that can do this type of thing for us.
Lately (as in class, not in the news) we've been learning about "Web 2.0" - what it is and what (if anything) differentiates it from "Web 1.0". In the book by Courtney (Library 2.0 and Beyond), the first chapter opens with a debate about what Web 2.0 is. Is it really just the web that we watched develop but now all fancied up? Is it being able to do things online (social network sites, online document storage, etc.) that 8 or 10 years ago wasn't possible? Or is it a combination of us as users and the web?
This video, I think, has a very apt title. The machine -- the internet web machine -- is both us, the users, and the internet uses us to improve upon itself. It feels slightly like The Matrix, but without all the computers trying to kill people stuff. Here's how I see it breakdown, and why I think the title works brilliantly.
Part 1: The Machine is Using Us - in the textbook, there are several points made about how the web was designed essentially to connect people. O'Reilly and Berners-Lee both make this point, although they do so in different ways. That connection could be with other people, with ideas, with information - the end doesn't matter as much as the fact that the web was designed to be a facilitator. In order to facilitate the movement on the web better, the "machine" has to learn its users. By learning what we're looking for and how we tend to search for our information, the machine (the search engines/the internet/the "machine") can facilitate the gathering of said information in a more efficient manner. This is how the machine "uses us". Many of the search engines are meant to be intuitive when it comes to looking for information - that's why when you mess up your spelling in a Google search it can be like your like English teacher and say "Did you mean ..." I never thought I'd actually be scolded by Google, but it asks me all the time if I really wanted to look for whatever I typed in to the search engine.
Part 2: The Machine is Us - obviously, someone had to program everything. Tim Bennners-Lee got us started with the www, but it takes manpower to create something as monolithic as the internet. We, the users of the internet, helped with the task. Many of the algorithms that the internet uses are meant to analyze what we do. But someone had to create the program. The internet is a quick study, but it's not that good. And that's where we as users and creators come in. Every time someone creates a new page or makes a new program on the internet, we shape the machine. There's a part of us in what create, and therefore the machine is a reflection of us, making it a version of us.
I think this was pointed out very nicely in Professor Wesch's video. He takes the audience on a ride through our most recent history from paper and pencil to typing on a computer to the creation of web page programming. I think the ending of the video (starting from the 3:20 mark on) is very explicit in why the video has it's name. According to a statistic in the video, people click on 100 billion web links a day. That's billion, with a B. That's 100 billion links that we've looked at, created, potentially commented on, and taught the web to connect to other links. If we could link even a fraction of that quantity of information we'd be geniuses. Instead, we collectively have helped to shape a system that can do this type of thing for us.
Friday, July 8, 2011
Handheld Devices
If I had $10,000 for the purchase of various handheld devices for my school, I would have a field day. First, I would e-readers. These would be primarily for the dyslexic students, but I would like (ideally) to have the ability to let anyone check them out. I really like the Nook and the Kindle, but as Amazon.com isn't a vendor with our district and B&N is, I'd go with the Nook. As much as I love touch technology, I would probably go with the regular black and white Nooks. I don't know a lot about dyslexia, but I worry that the color Nook might be difficult for the students to read. At the current price, each Nook would run about $150 so for 10 of them that would be $1500.
Next, I would look at purchasing ipads. There are so many awesome educational apps for the ipad, and I love that the students get excited about getting to use them. From the constellation apps for science to the e-books that students can create and read, students can accomplish so much on these tablets/personal media devices. While ipads technically could be considered a tablet, they don't really do well for word processing. You can word process on it, but it's not necessarily designed for word processing. However, I think that it's worth buying these for the application functions, especially since most schools, including mine, have a couple of computer labs and even a set of laptops that classes can check out. For a good ipad (64 gig but wi-fi only, no 3G), an ipad runs about $750. If I could get 6 of these, then the price would run $4500. While I could save money by buying ones with less memory, I don't think I would. Machines with less memory tend to get sluggish sooner and I would be worried that teachers would stop using the ipads quicker than if I were to purchase machines with a higher memory capacity.
So far, my running total is $6000 - that leaves me $4000 to play with. The rest of the money I would like to use for the purchase of video cameras that can be leant out to classes. Many classes can create videos for class projects and I would love to be able to purchase at least 20 of them (with memory cards) for the teachers to be able to check out. Kodak makes several types of pocket video camcorders that can mount to a tripod and also use memory cards to hold the video information. Kodak makes a camera called ZI8 which runs about $200. For a camera, tripod, and memory card the cost would be about $250. That means that I could purchase 16 camera sets and that would use the remaining $4000.
So, what are some project ideas that teachers can use with all this new, fun technology?
- class videos: each group can take a different topic and create their own movie
- commercials: want to teach ethos, pathos, and logos? Have the students make a commercial using these techniques.
- record scenes: in theatre, the students can practice their scenes and then watch themselves so that they can see what they need to improve on
- star mapping: use your ipad to save a trip to the planetarium
- teleprompter: putting on a show? Ipad has an app to turn your ipad into a teleprompter.
- ibooks: ipads can allow you to create a book in Pages and save it so that it can be flipped through as a book and students can see their work "in print"
-ibooks, part 2: purchasing ibooks for the ipad will allow you to play them back (and have them read aloud) for ELL students, beginning readers, or those that need help.
...and so much more...
Next, I would look at purchasing ipads. There are so many awesome educational apps for the ipad, and I love that the students get excited about getting to use them. From the constellation apps for science to the e-books that students can create and read, students can accomplish so much on these tablets/personal media devices. While ipads technically could be considered a tablet, they don't really do well for word processing. You can word process on it, but it's not necessarily designed for word processing. However, I think that it's worth buying these for the application functions, especially since most schools, including mine, have a couple of computer labs and even a set of laptops that classes can check out. For a good ipad (64 gig but wi-fi only, no 3G), an ipad runs about $750. If I could get 6 of these, then the price would run $4500. While I could save money by buying ones with less memory, I don't think I would. Machines with less memory tend to get sluggish sooner and I would be worried that teachers would stop using the ipads quicker than if I were to purchase machines with a higher memory capacity.
So far, my running total is $6000 - that leaves me $4000 to play with. The rest of the money I would like to use for the purchase of video cameras that can be leant out to classes. Many classes can create videos for class projects and I would love to be able to purchase at least 20 of them (with memory cards) for the teachers to be able to check out. Kodak makes several types of pocket video camcorders that can mount to a tripod and also use memory cards to hold the video information. Kodak makes a camera called ZI8 which runs about $200. For a camera, tripod, and memory card the cost would be about $250. That means that I could purchase 16 camera sets and that would use the remaining $4000.
So, what are some project ideas that teachers can use with all this new, fun technology?
- class videos: each group can take a different topic and create their own movie
- commercials: want to teach ethos, pathos, and logos? Have the students make a commercial using these techniques.
- record scenes: in theatre, the students can practice their scenes and then watch themselves so that they can see what they need to improve on
- star mapping: use your ipad to save a trip to the planetarium
- teleprompter: putting on a show? Ipad has an app to turn your ipad into a teleprompter.
- ibooks: ipads can allow you to create a book in Pages and save it so that it can be flipped through as a book and students can see their work "in print"
-ibooks, part 2: purchasing ibooks for the ipad will allow you to play them back (and have them read aloud) for ELL students, beginning readers, or those that need help.
...and so much more...
Friday, June 10, 2011
Technologoy and Media: Strengths and Weaknesses
As an educator, what are your present strengths and weaknesses in technology? How do you plan to use your strengths? How do you plan to address your weaknesses?
I think when it comes to technology that I'm pretty good with using the programs. Over the past few years teaching middle school theatre and theatre design, I've tried to utilize technology in class, whether it is having the students research on the computer, creating videos in class, or trying out a lesson with a Smart Board. I'm not the best by far, but I manage to make it through, and when I'm trying to fix something and can't I know who to call. On my campus, I'm one of the stronger teachers at using the Mac computers that we have in our class. As a librarian, I think being good at using technology is important as many campuses are getting away from strictly having a librarian to having a "library media specialist". Now librarians are expected to know how to use these programs and what applications it can have in the classroom. Because I've already been trying out different programs, I think (hope) that I'm slightly ahead of the curve when it comes to that aspect of being a school librarian.
As for my weaknesses, a big one is that I'm better with Mac's then with PC's (I haven't used a PC on a regular basis since Windows XP). And while I use Microsoft Office on a regular basis, I just can't bring myself to use the school laptop that has Windows 7 on it. This is something that I know I need to work on and plan to in the coming school year, especially given that our computer labs at school are entirely PC. Additionally, I think that I need to work on my computer troubleshooting skills, especially since, as I mentioned earlier, a lot of schools are essentially combining their librarian and their campus technologist. I'm not strong in networking and troubleshooting and I know this is something that I need to get better at. I'm hoping that this coming school year I can work closely with both the librarian and CT on my campus to help strengthen and round out my computer skills in order to not only make me a better teacher, but also a stronger library media specialist.
I think when it comes to technology that I'm pretty good with using the programs. Over the past few years teaching middle school theatre and theatre design, I've tried to utilize technology in class, whether it is having the students research on the computer, creating videos in class, or trying out a lesson with a Smart Board. I'm not the best by far, but I manage to make it through, and when I'm trying to fix something and can't I know who to call. On my campus, I'm one of the stronger teachers at using the Mac computers that we have in our class. As a librarian, I think being good at using technology is important as many campuses are getting away from strictly having a librarian to having a "library media specialist". Now librarians are expected to know how to use these programs and what applications it can have in the classroom. Because I've already been trying out different programs, I think (hope) that I'm slightly ahead of the curve when it comes to that aspect of being a school librarian.
As for my weaknesses, a big one is that I'm better with Mac's then with PC's (I haven't used a PC on a regular basis since Windows XP). And while I use Microsoft Office on a regular basis, I just can't bring myself to use the school laptop that has Windows 7 on it. This is something that I know I need to work on and plan to in the coming school year, especially given that our computer labs at school are entirely PC. Additionally, I think that I need to work on my computer troubleshooting skills, especially since, as I mentioned earlier, a lot of schools are essentially combining their librarian and their campus technologist. I'm not strong in networking and troubleshooting and I know this is something that I need to get better at. I'm hoping that this coming school year I can work closely with both the librarian and CT on my campus to help strengthen and round out my computer skills in order to not only make me a better teacher, but also a stronger library media specialist.
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