Is this the end

I really enjoyed this entire learning process. I was very nervous about this class in general. I feel entirely different now. I am a lot more confident in my ability to enrich the education of my students by using technology in the classroom. My favore discovery excercise was Animoto. I dont want to sound too cheesy by saying it was life changing, but it was absolutely an eye opener for me. I watched a presentation on the cival rights movement that was made my a teacher and was done for her students. As I watched it, I thought...."This is how I want to teach!" It was a prensentation that more effective than any powerpoint or lecture could ever be. I liked you tube a lot too. I am not sure I would have survived by statistics class if it would not have been for great you tube videos explaining how to solve the problems. It was also helpful in my math 1410 and 1420 class. I liked making a magazine cover in one of our discovery excercises. I think that will be fun to use for a student that is star of the week. Oh...and I LOVE my avatar:) This is my first time having an avatar. I even made it my screen saver on my computer! I want to be a life-long learner. When I become a teacher, I want to learn something new every day as well as teach. I think having a "teachable spirit" is an essential quality that all teachers should possess. Learning does not end when you receive a degee. I am thankful that APSU required me to take this class(as well as the chemistry class I has to take). I would have never voluntarily taken this class. But I have survived and I can say I really enjoyed it and learned so much. The fact that I was able to do this without any help is what surprised me most. I appreciate that fact that this assignment was taught and directed in a way that did not cause me to pull my hair out or cry myself to sleep. Some activities took longer that others, but none of them took a ridiculous amount of time. I like how (with the exception of you tube and facebook) everything was new to me. I will have to stay current on some of my RSS feeds and continue reading teacher blogs about WEB 2.0. There is so much already out there and new things are being created daily. I think most of what we learned is applicable for us as teachers. Using some of these tools will either save us time or allow us to create more meaningful lessons for our students. I know I will be a more success teacher because I now know how to apply some web 2.0 tools. My daugters 3rd grade teacher using shutterfly that also has a calandar on it. Not only do I get pictures of the class, but I get email reminders about all upcoming events and tests. I love this web tool and I am sure I will use something like this in my class. My resolution: When I become a first year teaher, I want to be a reflective practitioner. I will do this by keeping a blog. I will blog about my mistakes as well as what seems to be working. This blog will be encouraging to myself and other first time teahcers. It will be a way ro reflect, assess, and modify. It will be fun and helpful to keep a record of my teaching journey. I will end it each week by adding at least one thing I learned that week...after all, I want to be a life-long learner!

thing 23

This was posted on the bottom of the homepage for 23 games. *Note: This project is loosely based upon the website 43Things (which allows you to set and track personal goals) and the Stephen Abram article titled 43 Things I (or You) might want to do this year (Information Outlook - Feb 2006). The Disney video was very funny and was an entertaining and creative way to teach creative commons law. During our class with Dr. Jerles, I learned about creative commons for the first time. I had heard of copy right law, but never really took the time to understand it. I completely understand the importance in being able to determine if something can be legally "shared". As a teacher, we have so many places to get ideas for homework and lessons. There are so many great things on the web and there are many print books on the market. I found a website the other day with lesson plans and worksheets from teachers, and you had to pay before you could view and print the entire document. This was the first time I noticed this. I will be very careful of what I borrow. I will be sure to research where every artifact came from. Alexis made a good point on her blog and mentioned that its important to set a good example. She is right. We can't copy from someone else while telling our students they cant copy/cheat. Using someone elses stuff is really not worth it. I will look for items that I am able to use that have minimum restrictions such as using it with giving credit to the creator or using it for non-profit purposes. I can appreciate the creative commons laws. I would not want to spend money/time and then watch other people profit from it. Learning about creative ommons in class was probably not the most interesting thing we learnd, but it was propbably one of the most important things we learned.

Thing 22

lesson plans

Wow! This discovery has taken me awhile to finish. I like everything this web 2.0 has to over. I had just never heard of it so it took me awhile to soak it all in. The binder I decided to share is linked above. I named it lesson plans. I went to a few different pages that had lesson plans created by teachers that I thought were pretty cool. I think 2 of them came from Google Earth. We just used Google Earth for our projects in EDU 3040, so it was the first think that came to mind. I then created a binder called blogs. I added a few popular blogs that teachers created. I like teacher blogs and I imagine I will use them to get lots of ideas for my classes in the future. I then made a binder and labeled it assistive technology. I found a site called enablemart.com that offers lots of products to purchase that aids with different exceptionalities. I have my milestone 2 interview this Thursday and one of the questions pertains specifically to assistive technology. I thought this would be helpful for my interview:) More importantly, something like this would be helpful in the classroom. The amount of resources and all the different types of assistive technology that is available is unbelievable. I like how you an click on a particular disability such as low-vision and then it will show you all the types of technology available to assist with that need. I think that LiveBinders can be great for kids to use to get extra help with homework. As a teacher, I could offer links to safe sites that I approved of that will help kids (and parents) with their homework. For example, if we are doing a unit on proper and common nouns, I could find a site that offers extra practice on the subject. Sometimes parents need a little bit of a refresher course on different subjects. For example, when my daughter came home and had to do commutative property and identity property and associative property, I had to do some Googling because I forgot which was which. I also think LiveBinder is a great way for older students to gather information for a research project. It saves paper and gives the student an opportunity to creative a binder that they feel will be useful to them. In our 3070 class, we are required to make a binder with at least 50 artifacts from the internet. Some of these "artifacts" are 5 pages each. This is a lot of paper and printer ink. There are over 120 students taking 4 sections of this class. We are wasting so much of APSU money (I imagine we are all using the computer lab to print our stuff)...anyway, as I was learning about this tool, I realized how we should have made a LiveBinder for 3070 instead of having to print everything!! I liked this webtool and I think I will use either this or something like this in the near future. I see the potential of using this as a teacher, but I see the potential in using this right now as a student.