My EDM 310 Blog Assignments are Now Complete!

Fellow Classmates,

I hope you all have a wonderful summer and good luck with all of your future goals. I wish each and everyone of you much success!!

Final Blog

Well, this is my final blog for EDM 310 at the University of South Alabama. I really enjoyed every minute of this class because I have learned a lot of interesting things about technology and how I can incorporate it into my future career plans as an elementary teacher. I am really glad I learned power point, especially because I have always heard about it and how fun and useful it could be. I think out of every thing I learned, I enjoyed it the most!! Learning about podcasts and how to do it was also interesting and fun. It was like having my own mini radio show. I think knowing what a podcast is all about will help give me great ideas to use in my classroom for planning and to find out all sorts of educational information from other educators abroad. Learning spreadsheets was confusing at first for me because of the different formulas. But after doing it a couple of times, I think I've got it. Not only did I learn to use it as a budget tool, but being able to use it for data purposes, like using it to create a grade book, was interesting. Technology is forever changing and coming into this course, I only new the basic computer skills like searching on the web and using Microsoft Word. I only heard of blogs from having a myspace page, but I never used it. So blogging, I've learned, is a great way to communicate and share your ideas and opinions with everyone around the world on various topics. When we discussed Wikipedia, I knew it could be used for research purposes, but what I didn't know was anyone could alter the information. That's what I don't like about that site. Thanks Mr. Wakeman!!! You taught me that you can never be to sure if the information on this site is true or false. So that helped me learn not to rely just on that one site alone. Overall, I enjoyed this course and Professor Wakeman. I hope my classmates learned just as much information as I did and will be able to use them in their future endeavors.

The Edible Schoolyard and A Night in the Global Village

I really enjoyed this educational clip. The Edible Schoolyard , located in Berkley, California, along with the Martin Luther King Junior Middle School, has taken learning math, science, social skills, and social studies to a delightful new level. Not only was it interesting, but it makes you wonder how a teacher could incorporate different real life situations to help students learn. And learn in a different, but fun way. It's like the "head fake" that Randy Pausch talked about in his last lecture. Which simply means students learn in a fun way while unknowingly learning some type of educational objective.
Even though students at the Edible Schoolyard aren't in a classroom setting, they learn the same core subjects being taught in a public school. They learn math by calculating ingredients needed for cooking and using measurements. Science is learned by discussing things like water molecules and condensation. They also learn social life skills, for example, working as a team. And this style of learning just happened to be created by the wonderful mind of Alice Waters, who was only trying to improve the school lunches...Way To Go!!




The next video clip of the Rocky Mountain School of Expeditionary Learning at the Heifer Ranch is amazing. You often hear about modern kids being spoiled or being born with a silver spoon in their mouth. Well, the kids from this learning school is learning how to live on the other side of that spectrum. On the ranch, the students are divided by numbers and placed in different styles of living conditions based on other poor, underdeveloped countries. They have to learn survival skills that are out of the norm. Skills like how to cook food without a stove, how to communicate without talking, how to negotiate with others, and teamwork. This style of learning not only teaches those skills, but it also teaches students to be thankful for what they have because there are those in the world who are less fortunate.

Both of these videos had a lot of educational value. Students will learn how to deal with real life situations. From growing their own food, to communicating, to working with others as a team. And even though the learning environment is different, they both still serve an educational purpose.

Both videos made me realize teachers can form ideas outside of the "box". And a fun, interactive, learning environment can teach students on many different levels on various subject matters, all at one time. There are so many resources educators can use now, teachers have no excuse for not being creative. And being creative like these two schools, will leave a long, lasting impression in the lives of their students. And that's what counts! To find out more, please visit this link for the Heifer Ranch or visit edutopia .

Itunes University

Itunes is a new way for educators at universities to stay connected to their students through the itunes website. Universities around the world, like Carnegie Mellon and Stanford University, are able to post lectures and assignments at Itunes University for students to download to their ipods or personal computers. Because of the advances of technology, students can study and learn no matter where they are.

And as a teacher, it is our duty to keep up with the changes our world is going through technologically. Students are increasingly bored with learning the "old fashion" way. So teachers have to come up with new ideas and ways to keep education interesting. And that was the goal of Duke University when they incorporated using ipods into their classrooms.

Itunes University has made information to be easily accessible for students. Itunes is a 24/7 website and it offers a variety of educational content from top colleges/universities and educational organizations. It is very helpful for those students who may have missed lectures to stay on track with the rest of the class by downloading the lectures or notes, video clips, and/or podcasts from their particular school. And it is a lot more interesting than sitting at a desk taking notes. So hopefully, more teachers and/or schools will become aware of this new technological epidemic because today's students are all about technology!

IPods In The Classroom

Over the past couple of years, ipods have become increasingly popular. Not only as a means for looking "cool", but now ipods are becoming more popular and useful as an educational gadget. Educators are using this tool to help students broaden their horizons on what all ipods could be used for. And seeing how almost all students from elementary to college own one, the change from the basic learning methods , to newly innovative, technological methods are inevitable.

Ipods are now being used to record lectures given by their teachers instead of the old method of using paper and pencils/pens, or by even using a tape recorder. This is so students can listen and review while doing day-to-day activities like driving, walking/running, or studying. Students could also use their ipod as a logging tool to help with completing assignments outside of the classroom.



Duke University first implemented this new "style" of educating in the Summer of 2004. Testing the ipod out for a year as an educational means, Duke hoped the outcome would encourage students to be creative with the use of technology and discovered that the experiment was successful. So hopefully, this will spark a light for other institutions to incorporate new digital, audio technology in their educational curriculum.

Dr. Alice Christie

Dr. Alice Christie is an experienced educator of 40 years. Her site is designed to help all present and future educators better develop and present educational technology in the classroom. Dr. Christie's homepage is very basic and easy to navigate through. On her site, you will find topics like: 1)Workshops, 2)GPS and Geocaching, 3)Google Earth, 4)Searching the Web, and 5)Web design, etc.

I looked through different parts of her site, but web design was interesting and informative to me because I don't know anything about web design. Each topic has a basic homepage with a brief summary of what you can find under that specific category. So under the topic web design, she explains to her readers that they could find web design resources, tutorials on how to create one along with examples. And there's also rubrics that would help guide you when creating a site.



Then Dr. Christie gives informative links to help teach you how to be successful at web designing. She discusses the principles and the tool kits for web designing. As well as how to edit pictures and the how to and when for implementing tables. She developed her own rubrics guide and broke it down into 2 parts, depending on what or who the site is for. And she post tips for web publishing, links that discusses copyright issues, and links for multimedia resources to discuss things like photography, cameras, and podcasting.

So I believe Dr. Christie's site would be helpful to me as a teacher because I don't have any experience with web designing. She basically uses her site as a teaching guide for educators by using a step-by-step means of explaining to those of us who aren't proficient with technology and using it in an educational manner. Each section of her site is easy to follow which I also think is very important for beginning teachers, like myself.

Can Wikipedia Ever Be Trusted?

I had never really used wikipedia but a few times. And I thought it was all legit. But now I really have mixed emotions about the web site. And not only because you don't know if the information is true but you also don't know the intentions of the individuals editing what kind of information is on there. I thought this was a web site that a research team does. And maybe only the research team could edit or update. But was I so wrong! But thanks to Virgil Griffith who was the genius who discovered a way to tell who is editing this site. So whether or not this site could ever be a "trusted" site for information is unknown. But if I was doing research on a topic, I wouldn't just rely on wikipedia itself. I would research and consider other sources of information as well.