VEry Last Post

I posted a link to this blog onto my website as well but here is a link to my Website under construction. Should be done soon though!!!


http://s2.webstarts.com/TechnologyintheClassroomfinalproject/index.html

Last Post!!

Yikes, This color is tough. I will change it back in order not to blind anyone.

This last week I have been working alot on my final project. I will be making an educational website which will be utilizing webstarts (for the actual website), Jing (for an instructional video on how to use the website) and Survey Monkey (for the questions at the end of it).

Here are some links to all of the sites

http://www.jingproject.com/
http://www.surveymonkey.com/
http://webstarts.com/cadmin-v2.7/dashboard/index.php'

And finally the link to my website is here! It will be getting updated alot in the next couple days so if you want you can keep track of my progress.

http://s2.webstarts.com/TechnologyintheClassroomfinalproject/



Thanks for tuning in. This is a Gordon Grad student saying g'night!

Projects

So today I messed around with some of the editing features available on the blog. I just toyed around with the basic color schemes and everything else. Other than that I am working on my project today! Good luck to everyone else working on schoolwork on this beautiful day.

weather.com

New Tech

So the last two weeks I have been exposed to two very cool technologies that I knew little to nothing about beforehand.

One was Second Life and the other was CILC. Here are the links to both. They are great for communicating with the world at large and I have just barely looked at the usefullyness that they have for the educational world.

Take a look for yourselves. I am going to add these links to my page as well.

http://cilc.org/

http://secondlife.com/?v=1.1

New Stuff

So, this weekend I take the MTEL test in Swampscott. Should be entertaining. here is the website for the mtel in case any of you future teachers are looking into that.

http://www.mtel.nesinc.com/

Wish me Luck!

This week in class we are going to check out second life. here is a link to that program as well.

http://secondlife.com/whatis/?sourceid=0909-sergoog-slSecondLife-wisl&gclid=CIrwreX9nKACFdRM5QodN3Mxgg

This Week

I am going to Waterville Valley on Friday and Sugarloaf on Saturday to snowboard!!! Should be awesome cause the forecast looks like a lot of snow is coming their way.

Here are the links to those mountains.

http://www.waterville.com/winter/

http://www.sugarloaf.com/

I am going to put a White Mountain Snow Conditions alert in my links on the side of the page.

Go Team USA. What a great hockey game that was. I was at work watching it happen, the bar at the restaurant was going nuts!

Jing File with Audio!

Here is my completed Jing file with Audio done from Screencast.

http://www.screencast.com/users/cashmoney321321/folders/Default/media/adba7369-498b-4422-9726-636ef2043401

Here is the Jing/Screen Cast Experiment Link

http://www.screencast.com/users/cashmoney321321/folders/Default/media/3dd834f0-3c9d-416b-a739-eec96a7ec02a

New Tecnology

Ok so this week I have been tooling around with Jing, a program that lets you take a video or picture of your desktop and you can put your voice (if you are doing a video) into file as well. It is cool feature you could use to help students with certain websites by talking them through it as you click through whatever website you are using.

Also right now I am trying to upload my Jing file and send it to my class using a site called Screencast.

Ahah

I am going to try and post this on the blog..... somehow.

Another cool blog to follow.

Also here is a great blog from an Gordon-Grad on Christian Culture. If your interested she is writing this blog while she is writing a book. It is a great blog.

http://werewolfjesusbook.blogspot.com/

Success

Ok great, got my Celtics video bar up. Too bad the Celts are playing so poorly now.

Today we learned about Audio editing for podcasts, a program called Jing that I will be integrating to the Blog soon, and Wiki's. I will also put a link to wikipedia pages I like on here at somepoint.

Videos

Ok so the video trick I tried didn't work. I am going to post the directions I was given and maybe try it again in class.

These are from a classmate.


"So it took all morning for me to figure this out, so I thought I'd share.

When adding a video bar to your blog, there seems to be some sort of corruption - when you add it, it looks like the videos that you want are there, but after a short amount of time, the videos change to other, random videos that you never wanted. Here's how to fix it:

Don't add a video bar...instead add an HTML gaget. Go tohttp://www.google.com/uds/solutions/wizards/videobar.html to create your video bar, then copy all of the information that appears in the big blue box and post in your HTML gaget. Your videos will appear and will not change.

I'm pretty proud of myself for figuring this out!!!"

New Job

I got a new job this week! I am waiting tables over at Dockside in Wakefield. Just finished my second day and so far so good.

On another note, I tried Lisa's method of getting videos onto the blog site. Now I just gotta see if it worked.

New Additions

As I slowly start to understand what I can do with my blog, I will be adding things to it and it probably won't all fit together. I added some Celtics video's to the top because I really like the Celts.

High School Subbing

So today I subbed for the first time in a high school and I got to have a basic look at what technology they had at that level. This was in the same district as the middle school I subbed in, so I wasn't really surprised when there wasn't a huge difference in tech use in the classroom but some of the things they had were interesting. One of the student teachers (also a Grad Student from this school) used her laptop to make interesting power points of her lessons instead of just using a marker board and I think that having questions and answers flashing on the board helped the kids engage a little bit. I was a special ed aid today so I didn't get a great chance to see how the bigger classrooms were run but I saw that some of the kids came to class with small typewriter devices. I didn't get a chance to look up close but I think that would be a good idea for kids who's handwriting is illegible or someone who needs to have things more organized but can't afford an actual laptop. Next time I go into that school I am going to find out how they determine who gets to use those and how it exactly works.

Another observation that I had both subbing days was that I really enjoyed the small class sizes because you can reach the students more and have the attitude of the lecture or lesson match the personalities of the kids. It is just easier to specialize to specific needs with smaller groups. This leads me to wonder whether I should specialize in just History or do Special Ed along with it. A question that I hope I can figure out soon...

Second Blog Post!

So I substitute taught at one of the local middle schools today and I got a glimpse at what technology a middle to lower class school gets to use on a regular basis. Most of the classrooms I assisted in used markers and whiteboards, so I guess the technology was more recent than classrooms filled with chalkboards but not by much. On top of that I saw about 4 computers that students with writing disabilities could use to type up homework.

Later in the day I saw two rooms that had a cool program installed. It had projection screens that the the teacher could write (digitally) onto the screen by just making the motion with her special pen. That was pretty cool but at the same time it was a wake up call about how much modernization could be and needs to be done in today's classrooms.

This brings up the topic of how you could possibly afford and integrate such technology but I will save that for later in the class when I know more about the subject.

My First Post!

This is my first blog post ever, so naturally I am a little unsure about what I should write about. I think I will start by writing about the different teaching tools and techniques that I have been exposed to in the short time I have been in this class.

So far I have started to use Blackboard and learn about different uses for blogs.

In the textbook, the potential uses for blogs in the teaching field are numerous. Using them as a an Online Filing Cabinet, an E-Portfolio and a Class Portal are all idea's that immediately peaked my interest. I really like the idea that the students can get there assignments done via a blog and grading can be done with the response posts from teachers and peers. This technology is very new to me, but I am already enjoying the teaching philosophies and ideas that I have been exposed too. I look forward to writing about my experiences and reflections about them on this blog.