After taking this class, I am beginning to realize how important is to stay up to date with technology. When I was an undergrad student, and even a graduate student I did not have a full time job and did not have to worry about my students passing their state test. So I had more time to research new technology tools. However, after taking this class I know now that I need to make sure that I am up to date on the latest technology. Even though I had a twitter and you tube account before this class, I realized I did not use either of them to further my student's educational background. So below I have devised plan to keep my up to date with educational technology.
My Plan
To state up to date with educational technology, specifically Web 2.0 tools. I will use what I have learned with protopages and create a page dedicated to twitter feeds for educational technology, but specifically Web 2.0 tools. This way I can collaborate with other teachers and specialist around the world to find what is working in the their classroom, and see if there is anything that I want to try in mind. I can also use my districts staff development program, they are always offering educational technology courses. Unfortunately, many of the tools they show are tools that I already know how to use. However, I will keep my eye out because sometimes they do have tools that I have never heard of or have never used in the classroom before. Then I also do have former teacher friends of mine who use to teach technology courses, and I have in the past picked their brains about where to find good technology tools. The last place that I will go will be Region 10, they have staff development opportunities through their programs. I will look to see what they are offering and see what I can do to keep up to date.
Conclusion
I think that with all the resources that I have available to me, there should be no excuse as to why I can not stay up to date with educational technology tools. I know in the past I have thought, well I do not have time, and that is true during the regular school year I do not have the time to use tools on a regular basis. However, after the standardize testing would be a perfect time for me to utilize what I have learned to the betterment of my students.
Before taking ETEC 527 I did not what social booking marking was, but this weeks adventure has really brought some ideas about the educational community. The whole goal now in education is figure out how to share ideas and information with people over the web. Most people use either dropbox or google to achieve this idea. However, social book marking as expanded our ability to share information.
Diigo
Like I mentioned about I had no idea what social booking marking was, and when I first began to explore this new technology I still had no idea. Now I have book marked websites onto my web browser so I had an idea what this could be based on the fact that this is a technology course. So I set up my account getting ready to explore what I could possibly use in my classroom. I watched the video on how to get started and I was kind of floored. As I was watching the part about annotations I was thinking why did they not have this when I was in college with my bachelors and masters, and if they did why didn't they tell us about this tool. It would have saved me alot of paper and ink when I had to print off articles for my history classes. I could simply make the annotations and then come back to them later. This would have made my life so much easier. As I was working on it this week I really thought that it was easy to use. I like the fact that I could download the Chrome app and be able to click it and book mark what site I was one very easily and it go on to my site. So from that standpoint it would be easy for both teachers and students to learn.
However, on an educational standpoint I began to think about the group that we had to become a part of and I thought this would be a good way to share information. I mean we have things like google drive, which my district uses on a regular basis, and things like dropbox. To me Diigo seems like a tool that could create the PLC (Personal Learning Communities) of your campus that would make it easier for ideas to be shared. Especially, when you can annotate or make a comment of what you post giving your colleagues and idea of what you can share. So as a PLC this would be a good tool to use. On the standpoint of one's classroom, Diigo would be a good way of sharing ideas with your students. Especially when it comes to the students completeing a project you can share with them places where they can find research materials. However, if you are asking them to use Web 2.0 tools this could be a good place to share with them tools they could use to complete their project. So in the classroom and in the professional community.
Conclusion
In the end, I have come to see the true benifits of this piece of technology. It was very easy to use and it can be used for many different aspects. If you have an article that you want your students to learn you can use the program to annotate the article. Then as we are in an age where we need to create PLC's in our schools and districts, this program is easy way to share the infromation together. To me this was the easiest technology that we had to learn about and explore in this course.
Before I started this adventure in this new Web 2.0 technology, when I saw the word aggregating page I had no idea what this technology was. Even the examples I was still kind of trying to figure out the educational benefits of it. However, as my adventure continued this week figuring out how to use this in the classroom was pretty easy.
During this weeks adventure we were asked to create an aggregating page, like I mentioned above when I first was asked to do this I thought it was a very strange adventure. However, after I began to play around with the protopage I thought I love this organizational tool. See for me I am a very organized person and one of the problems that I have with pages like Twitter, is that it is hard to organizer your thoughts. I like to be able to find what I am searching for with easy. Protopage allows that because you can create different widgets to fit your page. Like if I wanted to set this page as my home page and see my twitter feed or instagram feeds, this would make it easy to divide up the different feeds by topic. Such as on my page the ETEC 527 twitter feed is on there. Then you could make a page just for twitter feeds for news, education, whatever you need. It is a very useful organizational tool.
As I was playing around with my page, I realized that as a portfolio tool for your students work this would be great. If you had been having your students upload videos to a class youtube channel or twitter page. It would be a great way for you to track what your students were doing. But deep down your students could use a protopage as a portfolio for a project. They could create a page for each topic that you want them to cover and put the class twitter hashtag as one feed. But ultimately each page could be a different aspect of the project. It would be there, you wouldn't have to have paper copies of everything and your students wouldn't have to worry about loosing things.
However, professionally as an educator this would be a great tool to network. Use your protopage as a way to show other educators what you are doing in the classroom or to just simple work together on a project. It would be a great way to show different aspects of your teaching style and what you are doing as a professional. Its a great advertising tool for teachers.
Conclusion
All in all, I could see me using this more than anything that we have learned about so far. I know that I do want to keep playing around and see what other things I can place on the page.
This week were were asked to play around with You Tube and Twitter. You Tube is something that I am very familiar with especially in the classroom. In a social studies classroom, the most important aspect of the classroom is the content and so if a student misses my class, I need to make sure they get the content. So I will post my lesson on you tube, so I know alot about posting videos and play lists. However, I did learn alot of information about twitter, wikispaces, web 2.0 tools, and technology in social studies classrooms. Below you will find my play lists and what I learned from my adventure this week.
You Tube Adventure
Twitter
As I was going through You Tube to find the videos that would help me better understand Twitter better, these were the videos that I found. I am not a big twitter user, as I started in my blog for last week. I have never really been a big fan on sharing my personal experiences, so the most that I would do on twitter was retweet a news store or something that made my school look awesome. However, after watching these videos I learned alot about what it really means to our students but as me as a professional. In one of the videos, it mentioned that twitter can be used to build your professional learning network. As teachers we are needing to be constantly learning new methods in our craft and Twitter seems like the way of the future when it comes to that. Because you can use hashtags to create a PLN and it make it easier for people to find your learning community. However, but in a political science/government class twitter can be an extremely important tool as it allows for students to see political news easy. Especially, right now when it comes to an election year they are always posting news feeds. Then as a teacher you could set up a hashtag and have a political debate on a news story or even have your students watch one of the many debates going on and tweet live with your students as they watch. Twitter at least for social studies is good in that instances.
Twitter Adventure Continued: Since we are on the subject of twitter, I did take a moment to go and look up some of the hashtags that were suggested in some of the videos. @Teaching With Soul which when I went to go find the tag it was not there anymore so since the videos creation the tag has been taken down and @Edutopia. I found the Edutopia to be very informational about ways to improve the classroom. This allowed me to think that this is where I need to increase my PLN, because it seems like everyone is tweeting now a days on ways to improve the classroom. You Tube Adventure (Part 2)
Wikispaces
Till I took ETEC 527 I had never even new that there was a think called Wikispaces, and too me still have watching the videos I believe that in a K-12 setting this application would be confusing to students. These videos that I found even though they explained how wikispaces work and what an educator could do with wikispaces. I just never seemed to get on board with the application. To me wikispaces would be good in a college classroom setting where as a class or small group you could collaborate. However, with most colleges today they have some sort of online blackboard setting that allows for a learning community to develop and to me Google Drive allows for collaboration in an easier format. I think that to truely before I get on board with this application, I need to create my own personal wikispace and play around with it. I learned alot from watching these videos but for me to truly get on board with technology I need to play with it to determine how I think it could apply in my classroom or future classrooms.
Web 2.0 Tools
As I was watching these videos about Web 2.0 tools I kept getting reminded of the fact that schools today really do not give us the training we need for this but keep saying you need to incorporate them into classroom. I learned more from watching these videos about the importance of Web 2.0 tools. Many of the videos that I watched were an explanation of Web 2.0 tools so that I could get a better understanding and change my definition of what a Web 2.0 tool was. I now know that a Web 2.0 tool is something that not only teaches the student but it engages the student in learning, it could also be a tool that fosters critical thinking or fosters collaboration in the classroom. Then I decided to find videos about those who taught others about Web 2.0 tools and some of the tools out their for teachers. I learned some I had already been using like screen cast o matic, where I can record what is on my desktop and record audio with it. I know that I will be exploring more applications with this topic.
Social Studies Technology
The last part of my You Tube adventure came when I did some video research on my subject social studies. I found many videos that look very out of date like it was something they had created in the late 90s or early 2000s. Now some of the videos did look like they were created recently which I did find very informative especially when they discussed primary and secondary sources. However, when I typed in Web 2.0 tools, I found very little to help me. It seems that for social studies most people have yet to do research into this topic. I know for myself in particular I find that content out weighs what students do on a regular basis in the classroom. I know that I need to present the content in a story because the story is more important. Yes, I know what your thinking but they aren't learning that way or not all students learn that way. To answer your statement yes I know that, but in a social studies classroom you have to do the old way and but incorporate the new way. These videos just show me that there are not alot of technologies out there to help in a social studies classroom. Granted as I continue my you tube adventure I need to maybe narrow my search, so that is something else that I learned in my adventure. Another thing that I learned is that most people in a social studies classroom setting are posting their lectures online or offering some quick review method on you tube to help their students and by helping their students they are helping others.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, you tube is a great place to collaborate as a PLN (Professional Learning Network), as I mentioned in the Social Studies section teachers are posting videos and but posting on you tube people from around the world can benefit from their expertise. Because I know from my co-teach classroom that my students benefit from multiple teaching styles. I learned that you tube is also a good place to find informational videos to help me improve my craft or improve upon a technology that I might be having trouble grasp. In the end, as I play more with you tube I might find other helpful tools that I can take back to the classroom.
