Final Thoughts on Blogging

I was never much of a diary keeper and I don’t think I am an inherent blogger. I would classify myself as a lurker, a person who trolls many different discussion boards, websites and blogs, but not a contributor. I’ll occasionally add a comment at the end of an article but I’d never feel comfortable adding to something like Wikipedia. I am an infrequent Facebook poster and a newbie to Twitter. Like many folks, I use social media mostly to keep family members posted on how my kids are growing up.

 I definitely needed the prompting of a deadline to get my blog posts done. I doubt I would keep up with a blog without the outside pressure of a class requirement. Unfortunately, I never had the time to post comment on my teammate’s blogs. This limited the collaborative features of the blogs. However, I found the blogs a little redundant with our class discussion board. I spent my time responding to the discussion board instead of replying to the blogs.

I definitely have started to follow more blogs using the RSS feature. I do see some applications of blogs for my work and I plan to try it out in my final project. I’ll keep you posted on how that goes in my final blog entry next week…    

Student Lesson Unit –tell us what you thought about creating your own lesson.

Web Site Design Unit

I think classroom websites are an excellent tool for educators. With the advances in Web 2.0 technologies, creating a website is easier than ever. The design and hosting are as easy as using a word processor. If you know how to use email and MS Word, you will be able to figure out how to put together a straightforward website. I would probably use Google sites for making a class website. However, there are numerous other free applications as well. If you’re looking for more bells and whistles, you could use a service that charges a low monthly fee. The following site provides a review of such sites http://www.webhostingfreereviews.com/?ad=g_uri&k=Free%20website%20templates For example, http://www.weebly.com/ had some easy to use tools and created professional looking sites. Also, the company has an application for teachers at http://education.weebly.com/.

While creating a website is easy, implementing a website on a daily basis in the classroom is another matter. It takes creativity and forethought to make a classroom website a helpful tool and not an annoyance. A teacher really has to create a well thought out plan and have a vision of how her website will be put into practice. There are so many applications for a website in the classroom. It can be used like a newsletter to keep parents up to date. It can be used for group projects or writing assignments. It can be visible to the classroom only or published to the World Wide Web. A teacher doesn’t have to use every single feature. In fact, you are more likely to become overwhelmed this way. Just like teaching a student how to write a concise thesis, teachers must learn how to narrow the focus of their site.

Anecdotally, it seems when websites are imposed on teachers from the administration, the end result seems strained and not very useful. It is very important to get “buy-in” from the staff. Teachers must feel comfortable with the technology and have a clear idea on how they plan to implement it in their classroom. That is why a class like this one is so useful for teachers. It forces us to stretch a little and try technology in a new way. We can determine which tools will work best for us.

Web 2.0

Before this unit started, I had no idea what Web 2.0 was, I asked my tech savvy husband if it was a Windows upgrade. After this unit, I realized the internet is an ever evolving social tool. I always thought of the internet as an electronic library. An expert would create a website and I would passively absorb the knowledge I needed. However, as computer programs evolved into more user friendly platforms, the ability to connect and interact over the internet has expanded exponentially. The study of these interactions will create entirely new disciplines within the fields of sociology and anthropology. People are meeting their spouses online. Wiki sites allow the true democratization of information distribution. Blogs allow the free expression of opinions and the ability for others to comment on those opinions. Even television and radio are being usurped by user created content on podcasts and YouTube.

I was familiar with some of the tools we explored during this unit but I was never one to use them. I am not “hooked” like some people are to Facebook and Twitter but I have found applications for them that I didn’t anticipate. For example, I became intrigued with couponing after watching “Extreme Couponing” on TLC. I went to the TLC channel website and found links to some coupon expert sites. From there, I became Facebook friends with them, subscribed to their twitter feeds, and used the RSS feature for updates. These are all actions I would never have thought of before taking this Ed Tech course.

I was familiar with Flickr. I have a Pro account and have shared many baby photos on it. LibraryThing and Delicious were new to me. I really like the LibraryThing recommendation feature. Delicious seemed similar to Digg.com, www.digg.com. Digg classifies news and current events by popularity. According to the site, “Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. From the biggest online destinations to the most obscure blog, Digg surfaces the best stuff as voted on by our community. We’re here to provide tools for our community to discover content, discuss the topics that they’re passionate about, connect with like-minded people, and make some new friends in the process.” I found the following website after a Google search, http://www.go2web20.net/ It has hundreds of Web 2.0 tools which are classified by their tags. This includes a category for e-learning which would be helpful for teachers. One site I found there is for lesson planning at http://www.planbookedu.com/

Of course any new advancement comes with drawbacks. I think the study of internet addiction will be a blossoming field in the immediate future. I already know several people who spend more than three hours a day on social sites and online games. Web 2.0 provides yet another form of escapism that can be abused.

However, these Web 2.0 tools have great educational value. They encourage critical thinking skills and collaboration. All of the Web 2.0 sites allow students to reach out to a worldwide audience. These tools can appeal to a variety of different learning styles and assist students with learning disabilities. There is a “cool” factor to using Facebook in the classroom. However, there are many privacy issues with Facebook and many schools will not permit it in the classroom. Twitter can be used for short responses regarding educational topics. You may run into the same problems as Facebook though. Flickr is a great resource for visual learners but there can be inappropriate content there as well. Library Thing is a great resource for literature and book groups. Again, there are no guarantees on content. Voice Thread is a great resource for online learning. It can really enhance online discussions but not all students will have access to computers at home. I don’t see as much use for delicious, other than saving interesting educational sites, which I would save to my favorites on my laptop anyway.  

P.S. I am bbenson11 on Twitter and Bonnie Benson  

Power Point as an Educational Tool

Before this week’s lesson, I always thought of Power Point as a slide show with bells and whistles. Most of my experiences with PPT were fellow student presentations. The PPT presentations seemed to be more to show the professor, “I must have put some thought and effort into this project because I made a Power Point.” They did not add depth to the presentation.

However, after this week’s lesson, I realized the range of applications for Power Point. It is a great multimedia tool for educational purposes. Students can utilize Power Point as a tool to extend their learning. There is no denying the “fun factor” with Power Point. This can help engage students. As a teacher, it is my responsibility to find a way to assimilate the fun design aspects of PPT with a deeper understanding of the content of the lesson.

The article I cited during our discussion this week is a perfect example. In Engaging Older Students with Reading Disabilities: Multimedia Inquiry Projects Supported by Reading Assistive Technology, the authors detail how PowerPoint can be used to improve student engagement and comprehension. The tools the teachers used allowed the students to develop research questions, organize their thoughts, and synthesize their research into exciting and informative presentations. At the end of the summer session, the students presented their projects to parents and other classrooms.

Power Point should not be used as a crutch to make a lecture flashier in the classroom. It should be used thoughtfully and integrated into lesson plans to add to the student’s learning comprehension.

Works Cited

Michael W. Dunn, et al. "Engaging Older Students with Reading Disabilities: Multimedia Inquiry Projects Supported by Reading Assistive Technology." TEACHING Exceptional Children 39.1 (2006): 6-11. ERIC. EBSCO. Web. 7 Apr. 2011

Design Principles Post

I really enjoyed learning about the principles of contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity in Williams’ book. Graphic design can be a daunting subject to break down for a greenhorn like me. The author has a straightforward, beginner friendly tone. The many visual examples were vital for grasping the concepts she described. As I read the book, I thought, “Of course, this is so easy!” However, actually applying the principles was not so easy. Like anything else, it will take practice, practice, practice. Getting away from center alignment will be the most difficult for me. Letting go of Times New Roman and Arial will also be tough.  As I practiced the concepts in the book, sometimes I couldn’t quite tell if my designs were more sophisticated or just kooky looking.

I have to admit I felt like my three year old daughter, ready to stomp my feet and pout, when I first started this assignment. Word for a design project, how gauche! I have always used Publisher for this type of project and I have always relied heavily on templates from Publisher and Word. I have always worried my flyers and newsletters look like everyone else’s because there are only so many templates available.  However, at the end of this assignment, I felt like I had created a more customized, personal newsletter than I have ever created before. Now I know how to step out of my comfort zone and I have much more respect for Word. Also, I have heard Publisher isn’t included in all Microsoft Office packages anymore. I may run into computers that don’t have it installed.

These basic principles of design can be very helpful for both the teacher and the student. Both need to understand how to make their projects pop in a visual culture. The current generation of students may be creating entirely digital projects in the future. These projects may include pictures, graphs, and screen shots. Students will have to understand how to organize this visual information and balance it with their text. Teachers are fighting for the attention of their students and parents in a media-saturated environment. If a teacher can create a visually dynamic flyer or newsletter, it is much more likely to be remembered.

All in all, I am excited to use the lessons from the past two weeks in my professional endeavors.  

MS Word - a great educational tool

I have been a Microsoft Word user since high school. I have felt pretty comfortable with it for some time. However, familiarity breeds contempt and I never thought Word would be very capable at visual designs. I have always used Microsoft Publisher for these types of applications. While I’m not sold on Word over Publisher, I was surprised at what I was able to produce on Word. I really enjoyed playing with the options for photos. Below, I have links to a riding lesson flyer I made last year in Publisher and one I created this week in Word. I think the lessons I learned about design have made the flyer much more visually interesting. I’ll post more about design and my newsletter in my next blog post.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/51623819/2010-family-clinic-flyer3

http://www.scribd.com/doc/51625377/2011-Family-Riding-Clinic

            Personally, I love MS Word as an educational tool. Before this week, I was still a little leery of using MS Word 2007 since I had been using the older versions of Word. I never had a great grasp of “The Ribbon.” After this week, I think I can use and explain its functions to students. In our online discussions, I mentioned the Outline mode of Word. It is a great way to organize information when drafting a composition. With the new features of MS Word 2007, I bet teachers could create great graphic organizers. For example, a quick Google search brought me to this file:

http://www.schoollink.org/twin/Creating%20Graphic%20Organizers%20Using%20Microsoft%20Word.pdf

Unit Two - Web Search Engines

When folks think of internet information searches, I’d wager most people think of Google, Yahoo, or Wikipedia. While these tools are fantastic, they barely scratch the surface of what is available on the web. This week’s unit opened my eyes to the vast amount of resources available. Most web searches are easier than periodical database searches because they use natural language features. Web searches are good for finding quick but not necessarily thorough answers to questions. The web is a great resource for practical questions such as lesson plan ideas or finding examples classroom layout designs. They are also excellent resources for networking, like listservs, chatrooms, and bulletin boards.

This week’s unit also reinforced my belief that teachers must guide student’s research online. Learning how to use web searches effectively is an excellent way to develop critical thinking skills, such as synthesizing data. Many students come into the classroom with plenty of experience with social media and the web but don’t understand how to filter through the avalanche of information available. In addition to teaching how to search effectively, teachers must show students how to evaluate the information on websites. Anyone can post to the internet, which is both a benefit and drawback. It means all information must be looked at with a discerning eye.

One search engine I tried this week was Yippy.com, a site I had never heard of before. Yippy.com is a metasearch engine. It queries Ask, Open Directory, Gigablast and others. It groups similar results into clouds. According to yippy.com, “Clouds help you see a topical overview of your search results so you can hone in on exactly what you’re looking for or discover unexpected relationships between items” (http://search.yippy.com/help-clusteranatomy). I was surprised that Yippy.com provided the best resources. My “periodical database education” search retrieved over 9,400,000 results total and Yippy provided the top 207.

Yippy’s cloud feature reminded me of the search subject feature I used in the periodical databases. From my original search, Yippy created over 20 clouds of related information. Clicking on one cloud gave me smaller results of 12 to 20 related topics. Picking one of the clouds brought me to an ERIC link for an article titled, “Six Online Databases: A Librarian’s View” by Harry Willems (Source Book Report, v17 n5 p47-51 Mar-Apr 1999). However, the full text was not available through the web search. I went back to the Hatch Library databases and searched the EBSCO database and found the full article, which my inner geek thought was totally cool.

Unit One - Periodical Databases

Periodical databases are a crucial resource for effective research. I believe periodical databases aren’t as initially user friendly as web based searches. However, like most skills, periodical database searching becomes easier through practice. It is a skill that requires a solid foundation of understanding before moving on to more advanced techniques. Beginners should start with simple keyword phrases while advanced students can learn how to refine and/or add depth to their searches.

Learning how to use periodical databases is an important skill to teach in the classroom. As stated above, there are many techniques to craft an effective search. Most students are not likely to practice these skills in their free time. This is one of the many online literacies teachers must develop in their students. It is important students understand the difference between “googling” it and thorough academic research.  

While I had some practice in search techniques, I had never thought about exploring the “about” and “help” section of the databases. I have always treated periodical databases similar to a Google search in that respect. I’d plug in my Boolean search words in the keyword field and cross my fingers. I had never checked which journals my databases used. Also, I realized how helpful the subject lines could be. Instead of trying endless variations of keyword searches, I clicked on related subject terms within appropriate articles. This brought me to a wider pool of articles and helped me refine my search.

The biggest “aha” moment for me during this assignment was realizing you don’t have to go to the library to do basic research any more. While I had done many Lexis-Nexis or Eric searches during my undergrad years, these electronic searches only gave you the citations, not the articles. This meant finding promising article abstracts then trekking through the stacks in the bowels of the library to find the actual article. Then, if the article ended up being what you hoped, which was a 50/50 proposition sometimes, you had to lug the journals to the copier machine, have a pocket full of change and make copies to bring home to your dorm. Now, most of the databases have full text options and you can print the article at home and never change out of your PJs (although I was known to show up at the library in green flannel PJ pants during finals).  

Unit Three - Blogs

I’ve been aware of blogs for many years now. However, I never really thought how I could use them. I joke that my father is a member of the right wing conservative blogosphere. He’s been blogging for years.  I’d often hear news reports or radio personalities citing information from blogs but I’d never check them out. I’ve always viewed the internet from “traditional” website that I found from Google searches.

One of my personal interests is animals. Unfortunately, my husband is allergic to dogs. I have spent countless hours pouring over the Google results of “hypoallergenic dog” searches. I never thought to look at blogs for people’s personal experiences dealing with allergies. Blogs are also a great professional tool for me. I can find blogs about horse care, riding instruction, and therapeutic riding. I am also really excited to continue exploring RSS feeds. I’ve always had a growing list of favorite websites on my tool bar that I visit on a regular basis (usually to kill time instead of doing homework). Now I can have a lot of that information directed to one central place. I could connect that to my blog and share my interests with others, a very cool feature. Again, this is another thing my dad is about five years ahead of me on.

I agree with Will Richardson, blogs are yet another important educational tool created by the digital revolution. They can change how students, teachers, parents, and administrators interact. Blogs can add a whole new dimension to the classroom and be used for a multitude of reasons and purposes. The uses for blogs are limited only by the imagination of the teacher and his or her students. Lisa Zawilinski has written an excellent article titled, “HOT Blogging: A Framework for Blogging to Promote Higher Thinking.” She describes why blogging develops higher order thinking in students and how to implement blogs in the classroom. She states, “On the internet, writing is intrinsically integrated with the reading comprehension process. As online readers gather information to solve a problem, they frequently analyze information, critically evaluate, synthesize across multiple texts and communicate with others” (Zawilinski , p.652) 

Zawilinski has created a step by step process to develop these critical thinking skills. This practical application described in the article makes it easier to understand how to apply this new technology in the classroom; an endeavor I am excited to undertake.

Works Cited

Zawilinski, Lisa. "HOT Blogging: A Framework for Blogging to Promote Higher Order Thinking." Reading Teacher 62.8 (2009): 650-661. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 19 Mar. 2011.

Here We Go...

So this is my initial foray into the blogosphere. I've have never been much of a blog reader and never an author. Sometimes I read or post to website bulletin boards or the occasional chat but I have never created my own blog. Look for my answers to the class assignment soon.