Summative Final Project

Hey Everybody, here is the URL for my Youtube video reflection. Its only about two minutes because if it were any longer the file would be too big to upload. I think its my webcam program that makes the files so big. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeJ1wTVmJm4

Dan

The ICT Boys

Wednesday the boys from Manitoba Education came in to blow our minds with a couple money presentations on ICT in education...kind of been our theme. Before these presentations I certainly knew that I had some strides to make if I was going to be keeping up with technology. Darren explained the benefit and necessity of going one step further. We need to be preparing students for the future, the world of tomorrow...Today! Sorry, that was quite lame. Moving on...Darren further stressed the need for fluency in ICT rather that simply being literate. We are in a new age and technology is literally changing everyday. Teachers need to stop trying to control the use of technology and start embracing it, because it is not going anywhere anytime soon. This also plays into differentiated instruction and promoting critical thinking instead of rote memorization of facts and figures. Students need to be able to take the knowledge that they've learned and be able to think on their feet and adapt, integrate, and develop new ideas.

I also want to talk about Wolfram Alpha. Man do I wish I knew about this when I was in Real Analysis with Chenkuan Li...."where is a Dan?"...well he's on Wolfram Alpha getting some proofs! But seriously, what a great tool this thing is! However it also raises a problem like Darren said, students can find the answer to any problem you give them. So rather than ask the students for the answers we must ask for interpretations and explanations. I'm starting to realize that writing in my math class may actually have to happen..lol. I plan to use things like learning logs, blogs, or other forms of reflection in my math class. It seems like the best way for my students to regulate their learning and for me to get a real glimpse into their thought process. Metacognitive abilities are very important in my opinion and students need to be exercising their abilities in this area to have the greatest acheivement and success.

All in all a great couple presentations to cap off a great semester of Internet for Educators.
Shout out to Big Mike!

Peace,

Dan

Last Three Presentations!

The first presentation was on Skype and Elluminate. We had already had the pleasure of being introduced to Elluminate by Alec Couros, but it was nice to find out a few more thing about Skype. I was first introduced to Skype last year when my girlfriend went on a student exchange program to Colima, Mexico. It was a great, FREE way to talk each day and actually see each others faces. The only trouble we experienced was losing the call from time to time or occasionally the video feed wouldn't keep up with the audio, which were more annoying than anything. I love that I have the program now though and look forward to using it much more. I have a cousin who is a chef in Russia, and another who is teaching in Tokyo, so it is great to know that when friends or family are anywhere in the world we can still talk and see each other! Technology is really an amazing thing that makes you feel connected and closer to people when it never seemed possible. I think it would be a great way to connect with other teachers and classrooms across the globe. We can broaden our classroom or school community to include many others from anywhere in the world. It is a great, easy way to bring other worldly perspectives into my students learning, as well as my own!

The second presentation was on The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly of the internet. My stance on this has changed as of late. We all know that with the many positives that come with new technological advances, so do many negatives. Letting these negatives control how we use the internet and other technologies isn't the answer. Like many other things in life, when you tell a child or adolescent that they cannot have or do something you will more than likely run into a little thing called "spite." It never fails to show its ugly face. The truth is that many kids are very responsible and hold fairly high moral standard for themselves in the first place. But as soon as you put restrictions on them that they find to be unfair, they get an intense urge to do it anyway, just because you said they couldn't. I think we need to give the students freedom to make good choices and learn from their bad ones. There have to be some reasonable preventative measures that can be taken, that don't include banning, blocking, or filtering. We all know what happened with prohibition lol (not sure if that applies). Anyway, students need to feel like they are being treated like young adults and not ignorant, naive children.

This seems like the longest blog in history but there is just one more presentation to cover: Video Games! I definately see the point in trying to integrate video games into learning in school but I don't see it happening anytime soon. My feeling is that, say you could incorporate a video game successfully into your course, whatever it may be, if its focus is educational students will sniff it out a mile away. I think that if a student has to play a video game to do their homework, we are just putting them one step closer to where they'd rather be; playing NHL 2010, Madden, or Call of Duty). I'm not a huge gamer myself but I just think that if they are already playing video games they are gonna trade up for one they actually enjoy. Just my thoughts anyway. I actually hope that it somehow works out..I would just like to see how.

On to the next one..

Dan

I Want to Cyberbully Website Filters

So last Wednesday there were a few really good presentations..including my own which was probably super fascinating. I think all three presentation were great but the two topics that really stand out as important issues to me are Cyberbullying and Website Blocking and Filters in schools.

First, cyberbullying is a growing problem and I think will only get worse with all of the new mediums for communicating with each other. I haven't experienced it first hand to a serious degree but have seen it affect others in a very humiliating and offensive manner. For the most part my experience with it has been very light-hearted and meant to be a joke; just friends busting each others chops so to speak. I have no real problem with that, but I think a lot of the time the student on the receiving end wouldn't feel comfortable coming forward if they were personally offended and the joke crossed the line. I think these situations happen a lot more that we might think, the kids just don't come forward. There isn't an easy answer to this problem either unfortunately. Schools need to address this problem by talking to students about how serious these situations can actually be, and discuss how to avoid them. Also showing videos (many on youtube) that show the dramatic effects of cyberbullying. Anything would be better than leaving the problem untouched.

Second, filtering in schools is another growing concern. I have gone back and forth on this issue quite a few times but I think that I've settled on the decision that I think schools would be better of without blocking or filtering websites. Students need to be supervised while using the computers at all times, which shouldn't be a problem and would be happening anyway. This way the students could still utilize things like email and sites like youtube that have many positive educational purposes. I also think that many students, especially in inner city schools may not own a computer and need to use the school's facilities. If they can't access their email they will be falling behind when it comes to keeping up with their peers in the ways of communication and technology. I think filtering and blocking really do more harm than good.

My thoughts on it anyway...drop a few of your own.

Dan

Second Second Life

This week we had Mr. Mike run the show and Dr. Glen Gatin came back to share a little more about Second Life. I decided that maybe I was a little harsh in my first Second life post, and maybe it`s not so bad. I was just stuck thinking about all of the negative aspects of it. It turn out that it can be a very helpful tool. First of all, I originally thought the graphics were pretty lame and didn`t see what the hype was about. Little did I know that Mike`s fancy computer wasn`t powerful enough to get the best resolution and best result..for shame Mike. All kidding aside I think that seeing the Second Life world the way it was meant to be seen would make a difference in my interest level.

The other thing that I thought was very useful is that you could go anywhere in the world in Second Life without much difficulty. So I thought this would be great if you were a student going away to a new school and you could check out the campus pretty thoroughly before you even go see it in real life. If you are going on a trip to another country..you can sorta see the sights before you actually SEE the sights!

I certainly haven`t seen enough to make me want to use it in the classroom in some way but what my students choose to do on their own time is their business and I`m sure that they could be up to much worse than cruising around on Second Life. There are dangers on there just like in real life so students have to be careful and use good judgement, because even if they are being a good person in their Second Life, that doesn`t mean that everyone on there is doing the same.

So even though my view has slightly changed, I don`t think I`m gonna be changing in my life for a second any time soon.

Dan

Distance Learning

Distance education is a pretty hot topic these days as many different resources and methods are arising all the time. I've had some experience with IITV in my student teaching placement but I've already touched on that in previous blogs and comments. What I want to talk about now is something that I was shown at the career fair by the two people at the Lakeshore School Division. It was a new type of interactive white board. It is an American product called MIMIO that is apparently much cheaper than a SmartBoard and the best part about it is that it's portable. There is a devise that you can attach above your regular whiteboard in your classroom that captures everything that you write on it. The exact marker strokes that you create can be sent to a computer file and then posted on the internet or whatever. Ok so how does this affect distance learning? Well there is a mini MIMIO product that students can attach to their paper, it comes with a special pen that sends a message to the devise and it captures everything within the 8 by 11 area. This message can then be sent from the devise to the computer through a USB cord.
So the bottom line is...
Students studying subjects like math or science that require more than word processing assignments (like english and history allow for). The students can now do their math assignments as they would in a normal class...on paper...and then send their actual written work by email. I suppose that this could be done by writing out the assignment and then scanning it..but wait....the teacher can actually make comments and corrections using their own MIMIO mini on a blank piece of paper. Their corrections show up on the student's document that was sent to the teacher, on the teacher's computer screen, even though the teachers sheet itself has no work on it. The corrected work can be sent back to the student as if it had been printed off marked and then re scanned.
I know that my written explanation may have lost a few people so I'll attach a link to some demonstrations on YouTube so you can see for yourself first hand how it works!
It seems like a really cool tool that would save a lot of time and give distance education a whole new outlook.

Check it out...until next time...



Dan

Get a second life...

First of all I would like to apologize to my commenters for my late blog..just about forgot completely!

Glen's presentation began with discussing many different online environments and social networking sites..many of which we had been exposed to earlier. What I found to be the most interesting topic was Second Life. Not interesting in the sense that I have any motivation to become involved in it, but more thought provoking. Glen certainly made some great points on how it could be used in an educational sense but I don't see myself utilizing it for my own classes. It definitely has a lot of things to explore which is probably why I would stay away from it as it would distract from what my original goals were for using it. I think that a big concern would be cyberbullying. I believe that students using second life would only increase the amount of cyberbullying that goes on, because people would use a second life to be bad people, especially if there are no real consequences. People would be doing a lot of things they know they can't do in real life, because this way they can. I pretty much feel that it is just another way to waste time...which i do enough of already.

Those are my thoughts on it...let me know yours!