The Educator's Best Friend

I thought I would share this with all of you. Below youwill find a link to the Education World website. It's a great resource for teachers to get ideas on how to incorporate technology in the classroom. With features like daily tips, current artciles, and tech lessons for the week, a teacher that wants to add multimedia in the classroom can very easily see ways in which to do this. I used this website for a paper I just wrote about technology in the classroom to generate examples where English teachers can break up the monotony everyday class

discussions and lectures. This is worth taking a peek at for all you future teachers.

http://www.education-world.com/a_tech/

Enjoy!

The Duke Case

I'm glad I get to blog about this because I got to talk to my family about it over easter break. My sister went to Duke and was following the case pretty closely. Certainly this is a devastating circumstance that reflects very poorly on the university. Avoiding a discussion of the case itself, I want to reflect a little bit about the role that technology played in the case.

The e-mail contained some fairly condemning evidence that helped officials work up charges against the parties responsible. I've stated before that I'd like to live in a world where e-mails, blogs, websites, etc. were private. I'd like to think that private information that I send to one of my friends stays just that; private. Unfortunately, the world is full of crazy people that put inappropriate information that links them to certain crimes. I have no problem with officials using e-mail and blogs if they suspect that the information in them will help in investigations as secondary evidence.

More and more cases are being solved using this information. Since technology has become such a huge part of our daily lives, it is understandably going to play a large role in holding people accountable for the statements they make on the web.

Flowerama!

I am at home, playing around with the computer, and I started looking at my pictures. I thought I'd blog this photo of a flower from my trip to Hawaii last summer. It shows all the detail of the image, even where the sun reflects off of the flower. This picture always amazes me because I tend to over-expose pictures with my digital most of the time. I thought you'd enjoy how pretty this turned out! Hope everyone has a happy easter!

Wiki Wiki's Wild!

I spent some time searching different topics that I am familiar with on Wikipedia. The topic that I read all the way through was for "filmmaking." I did not find any inaccuracies and was impressed with the technical terms used in the description.

I realize that the Wiki study showed that it is a reliable source to investigate any topic further, but the idea of ANYONE allowed to write collaboratively makes me nervous. We have talked a lot in class about being cognizant of the fact that the world wide web allows people to put just about anything out there. We talked about evaluating websites to see how valid and scholarly they seemed at a glance. This is another example of trusting that someone else isn't steering you the wrong way. I have known about Wikipedia, and I am intrigued by the idea, but I would never use this website as a reference in a scholarly paper.

As an English major, I appreciate that Wikipedia embraces the idea of collaboratively learning. I would encourage others to participate in this writing, but also tell them to get a second source if they are taking information from Wikipedia.

A Global Perspective on Privacy Issues

I was just thinking about the last blog that I wrote about facebook privacy issues. I did a google search further to see if this was an issue with blogs as well. Is law enforcement using blogs to catch people doing illegal activities. The answer is yes...

It's not just facebook. MySpace and blogs and any public record of any kind is being debated heavily to see what police can search for while still protecting people's privacy. It's interesting that we have these public documents that we want people to view, yet feel betrayed when these public records are used against us to hold people accountable for illegal activities.

I think the world needs to recognize that we are living in a different age where we are privileged to have this kind of technology that allows us to easily communicate with others, but we have certain obligations to uphold the socially accepted norms of everyday life.

Face(book) Facts

I am actually torn on this issue. I subscribe to the same reluctant hesitation that Dan Bauer of University of Dayton does, which is that he does not like the idea of public safety or police looking at facebook to catch people misbehaving, but it is justifiable. I have discussed this issue in classes and usually take the side of the students who do not want their privacy violated. These articles cleared some things up for me. I thought that law enforcement was looking at facebook and targeting underage drinkers based solely on pictures from parties. This seems rather deceptive and unfair as they are punishing college students after the fact. These articles say that most colleges use facebook as secondary evidence, which I can understand. If someone is causing harm to himself or herself or someone else, the situation needs to be rectified. If facebook can help to solve this matter, it should be used because it is a public record.

As a facebook member, I do not like the idea of pictures coming back to haunt me. I have been discussing this matter a lot with my friends that are fellow juniors and seniors. Some have said that medical schools or dental schools have an opportunity to look at facebook and see how applicants spend their free time. Students need to be aware that, though some of these pictures may seem funny to their friends, but can reflect poorly on the way others view them. I think before punshing underage drinkers and the like, the university should tell students that future employers could view these and to get rid of any pictures or profile statistics that they would not want their moms and dads to see. Though I am of age to drink alcohol, I have gotten rid of all the pictures from parties that I am holding a drink in my hand. As a future English teacher, I really do not want my students to see me looking unprofessional in this situation. I agree with the articles, but would suggest universities and colleges develop some sort of policy so that students do not realize too late the implications of their facebooking.

Back-up Plan Needed in Classroom Using Technology

I just got back from an observation at SLU high in which a teacher (which I will remain nameless) brought in a tape of Othello to play for the class. For one reason or another, the tape would not play in the VCR and left a blue screen when the teacher pushed the play button. After ten minutes of struggling with this VCR with some of his technologically gifted students with no results, the teacher decided to just give them a reading day and the rest of the 35 minutes was spent in quiet study time.

I thought this was a good example of what not to do in the classroom. We get told time and time again to have a back-up plan in education classes in case the PowerPoint, video, or other multimedia device does not function properly. This seems logical; however, with teachers as strapped for time as possible, two lesson plans can be really taxing. It can thwart use of technology in the classroom. As such, I have decided to have back up lesson plans that I can pull if something goes awry that's useful. It does not necessarily have to do with the novel that we are reading and this can certainly be a nice change if the students are having trouble getting into a novel or other body of work. That's my new plan. It incoporates time efficiency and smart-thinking with a back-up plan in one!

Font Fanatics!

I had absolutely no idea how much goes into creating a font. Carter, and other font inventors, must have a sharp eye for the detail that goes into font making. Particularly interesting to me was the description of how to start creating a font and what to keep in mind when doing so. This includes spacing, serif features (how broad and how thick to make these features), and countless other elements. The article went a little over my head when it started assigning adjectives to the letters, such as "robust, proud R's." I have never thought about the R letter, in any font, being robust, but it is an interesting assignment that I would have liked the article to further explain.

I was unaware that font-makers like Carter created specific fonts for the phone book or magazines. This seems a huge task now that I have read the article and now all that goes into the creation of a new font, such as trying out different combinations like "ab" and "ac" to get an idea of how these letters fit together for attractive readability.

This article is very useful for professionals. Since writing to co-workers is an element in almost every job, it is helpful to know that the absence of serifs illicits modernity. The "emotional content of type" that Carter discusses is a really interesting idea that makes sense to me now. I suppose I subconsciously think about that when I am creating PowerPoint presentations. When I choose a type, I know what is appropriate and what is inappropriate, but I have never known why. This article sheds light on these oversights on my part and I thought it was well written and engaging.

PowerPoint to the People

PowerPoint is a piece of software that I have used since high school to present information to my peers. Throughout these years, I have learned how to make slides pleasing to the eye, add images and sound clips, and add different transitions in to make the presentation engaging. Most recently in this class, the ability to create a Jeopardy game in PowerPoint really got me excited.

PowerPoint is not only easy to use, but it really helps out presentations for both parties. The speaker does not feel as intimidated because the audience has another place to look and he/she has something to revert back to if necessary to help jog memory. Though must of us have used and feel very comfortable using PowerPoint, there are so many practical applications for it in the classroom that I feel it is worth going over again and again because there's always something else to learn.

I'm going to use PowerPoint in my teaching, and I will have my students use it as well. I need to be familiar with this software before teaching students how to be familiar with it. I'm glad I was able to go over some old and new things in class with an expert so that I can apply what I've learned into my daily life as a professional.

I CAN DO IT ALL!

Ok, so that actually didn't turn out to be as challenging as I thought. I just wanted to test out publishing a post that's a picture. I googled technology in the classroom and did an image search, saved it to my desktop, and clicked add image.

I think I've figured out how to add everything now and it's exceptionally easy. I really hope that I can use a blog in my English classroom to make formulating thoughts from the text and responding to comments a lot easier. With adding URLs and photos, there is an opportunity to get creative with the blogs.

Palm Handheld Devices

http://thejournal.com/articles/17865

We talked about this site in one of my classes discussing assessment. Essentially, teachers have now found a quick way to assess students and get immediate results by using palm handheld devices. Teachers test the students individidually and point to or write on the palm device. The scores are quickly computed and allow for immediate feedback. These devices allow teachers to set benchmarks along the way and ajust instruction as they see fit, responding to the formative assessments tabulated by computerization. Larry Berger, a CEO of the Wireless Generation, says, "When you get data to teachers in real-time, the entire learning process becomes more responsive in a way that motivates kids to get to the next goal. "

I have trouble seeing applications for this type of assessment in my secondary English classroom. I can see applications for this in elementary schools as a quick way to gauge if students are understanding fundamentals like spelling or computation. At the secondary level, assignments get a bit more complex and most of the assessment in many classrooms is writing samples. With writing as subjective as it is, a teacher needs to work on the papers by hand, seeing where the student went awry, etc. This is not even mentioning the cost of such devices, which is astronomical, and the cost to fix them if broken. Other teachers can spend half a semester's paycheck on these handheld devices, but I'll stick to grading with my red pen I think.