Social Networking

Classroom 2.0- I found that this site could be very useful and holds a great deal of potential for any teacher. I liked that there was a forum on the site that allowed teachers to ask for help from others on the site about projects that they want to do or about technology that is out there and how it can improve a lesson. It was very easy for me to navigate my way through the site. I was able to search the site by either a subject area or by a certain tool that I may want to use within the classroom. The site also provided the users with other links to sites that would allow the user to learn about different types of technology that is out there.

The site could be a great place to build up any educators social network, they have a large number of people as members who all seem to be willing to help out one another. I would enjoy using the forum to ask about how to properly use technology in a lesson.

The site also allows you to join numerous other groups that are related to education and technology. Once again it is a great place to begin social networking. I would start off with the "Beginner Group" but hopefully shortly after that I would be on my way to join numerous others.

The Learner's of Today

Today's learners are very complex and very adaptive. They have grown up in a world that is full of technology that is ever changing and evolving, so I am going to stay with the technology theme and say today's learners are like small search engines. They are their own google. Students today will obtain important information or knowledge from a wide variety of learning experiences, whether they are informal or formal learning experiences. Then when they need some type of information, they will search back through their learning experiences to find the most relevant piece of knowledge or information to help them out. Search engines are similar in that they will search through thousands of websites that contain a vast amount of information and will present the user with the most relevant sites for their search.
The information that is retained within the learner and the search engines also in a constant state of change. Information that is regularly used and correct is kept and easily remembered, as with a search engine that information is presented first. While knowledge and information that is not used regularly or is not relevant to a situation, is harder to retain or forgotten by a learner. With a search engine this type of information is presented last or not at all. The learner's of today, like search engines, have "The ability to draw distinctions between important and unimportant information..." and learner's, and to a smaller extent search engines, should also have "The ability to recognize when new information alters the landscape based on decisions made yesterday is also critical"
Today's learners are similar to search engines because they both are able to look for new knowledge from a wide variety of sources and determine what is important and what is unimportant, then determine how to use it properly.

Students and technology in the classroom, or lack there of

The video that really caught my attention was A Vision of K-12 Students Today. It was the only video that I have not already seen and I felt it was a very interesting video that really got to the heart of the matter. Students today are digital learners, they have grown up with technology in their homes and in school, they have matured along with it. Students are accustomed to using all different forms of media and technology outside of the classroom, but while they are in the classroom, so many teachers don't use technology or don't know how to use technology properly. The section of the video that really caught my attention was when they showed the statistics of how many teachers don't use technology within the classroom to allow their students to create their own work because the teachers themselves have never used the technology. Students know how to use the technology and are being stifled within the classroom because the teachers are not using it, so how is this helping students better prepare for the future?

Blog Safety

With the rapid advancement with technology today and the high number of students who use the internet and all the tools that can be found there, we need to ensure that students know how to protect themselves will they are online.

1. Do not put any personal information about yourself online or put any personal images of yourself within your online works.

2. Make sure that when you are blogging, the privacy settings are properly set so you can control who sees your posts, allow parents and teachers to view them, do not make them open to the public.

3. Have your studenst stay away from commercial sites that prompt them to input personal information. As teachers, we need to prescreen websites that we are sending our students to and discourage them from inputing any personal information when they are prompted too.

4. Inform the parents and the administration that the students will be blogging and using the website for classroom activities so they can also keep an eye on what the students are doing to help keep them safe while online.

Three Ways to Use Blogs in Class

1. One of the first ways I would use blogs within my own classroom would be as some form of assessment. This type of assessment would allow the students to express themselves in a more creative fashion than they normally would be able to with just writing an essay. Students would be able to import pictures, videos, audio clips, and hyperlinks within there blog to explain and support the information that they are providing within the blog. Blogs are also something that most students are familar with today, so it could be easier and less stressful for them to create a blog on an historic topic than to write a paper or to take a test.

2. I would use a classroom blog where students could find out information about due dates for certain assignments, post rubrics for the assignments, and create a forum where the students are able to answer questions or pose questions about different types of activities that will be posted on the classroom blog. By providing links on the classroom blog about the topics we are learning about, it will allow the students to learn in a less stressfull environment and at their own rate.

3. The classroom blog would also be a way for the parents of the students to keep track of what their students are learning within the classroom. It could get the parents more involved in the students learning process, something that most teachers would love to have.