Online Learning Experience

“What Did You Do in School Yesterday, Today, and Three Years Ago?”

This "class" is about using technology to create a digital archives of everything you do in school and in life, for that matter. The teacher of the course uses a field trip as an example. He takes a group of high school students to Virginia to visit historical sites. He points out that all of the students have phones with recording capabilities and cameras and they are not taking advantage of that technology. The students start using their gadgets for meaningful use, but soon return to the frivilous uses. This is an important distinction that the teacher makes. The students have all these gadgets (phones, cameras, MP3 players, etc) that are disruptive by themselves but can be used for good. As a teacher, it is our job to make sure we are making meaningful use out of otherwise frivilous actions (such as texting) with technology.

I really like many of the ideas that he presents. One of the ideas that I really like is using a personal network to gather and organize knowledge (such as iGoogle). I have looked at this in class when we were learning about web 2.0 tools, but I realized even more how usefoul it can be. Another thing this teacher advocated was using a blog for the students' homework - even going as far as saying not to use paper. Also, he doesn't have students read text books, but they download podcasts and listen to them on their music devices. I would not be able to implement all of this at an elementary level, but I can definitely use some of the ideas.

“Never Too Young”

This is a "class" directed toward elementary teachers. The point of this class is to show that technology can be used even for the youngest students. The teacher of this class talks about three specific technology tools to use in the elementary classroom. The first tool is Voicethread. This is basically a way to create podcasts, but it is made specifically for teachers. Because it is for teachers, there is built-in security that makes it appropriate to use for students. Voicethread can be set up for the teacher to use or for each student to have their own account under the teacher (this costs more money). I really like the idea of using this in the classroom, especially for kids who cannot express themselves in writing yet.


The second tool she talks about is Dipity. I had never heard of this tool before and it is really cool! This is a tool that lets you create an electronic timeline that is great for teaching the kids ordering and organization. This tool allows you to create your timeline, add events, then link objects to each event. A really neat feature of Dipity is that you can switch the view from a timeline view to a flip book view with is great for the younger students. I would love to use this for my students and I know that it would fit perfectly with the EALRs for ordering and time lines.


The last tool this class talks about is blogging. We have talked a lot about how to use blogs in the classroom already and this class talked about much of the same information. There are a few of her ideas that I really like. One of her ideas was having students create a virtual tour of their neighborhoods and posting it on the blog. This would involve using a video camera and uploading it. By posting it on the blog, it allows other members of the class to see it and post feedback. This is a great activity to incorporate into the unit on community and neighborhoods. The other idea that I really liked (and that we have talked about in class) was using a blog as a running commentary of what is going on in the classroom.
.