The class is now in our hands

After class this week I was driving home and thought about what we had discussed in class and how it is going to affect my learning. I'm not sure that letting us go completely will be too beneficial but I'm open to anything and willing to take the risk. As long as we all work together and provide each other with feedback and guidelines, creating our own learning enviornment may be very successful. In education today, teachers and students studying to be teachers are being beaten over the head with new ideas of constructivist learning, student centered curriculum and how learning should be in the student's hands. In my opinion, this type of classroom environment could be very effective to a certain extent. The teacher still needs to play a very active role and help guide the students in their learning. It would do no good for a teacher to say "alright kids, what do we want to learn today?" When the kids respond, the teacher needs to then do something with that subject and give the students opportunities to work with it and learn.

This being a college course, Dr. Z can let us go a bit more because we are more than likely intrinsically motivated and will actively participate. In an elementary school setting, the teacher can not just let the students go and expect results. There needs to be a happy medium of letting the students explore while also providing them with the new information that they are to learn. So it depends on the age and individuals in the class whether or not this type of classroom could work.

We also talked in class about all of the different social networks out there and this made me think about the amount of time it would take to go out to each site and log in. Nobody has the time to do that on a daily basis. At this point, Dr. Z reassured us and informed us about RSS feeds and that you could set it up so that all of your social network sites could be checked in one place. This gave me a little more hope but still did not convince me that I needed to participate in all of them. Many of the sites seem to offer the same benefits and in my opinion it would be best to just choose one or a few and participate in those. It may be helpful to collaborate with different individuals on different sites and use them for that reason. Throughout this week I will be doing research and thinking about how best to create our learning environment. Hopefully by next week, we have all done some thinking and will have a better idea of how to structure the course.

Types of blogs and Classroom 2.0

I thought the reading on the different types of blogs was very interesting because I had never thought of all of the different types before. Blogging is becoming another type of media for people to inform and educate the population or just get their ideas heard. I may start trying out a few of the different types in my posts and see where my ideas go. We also started working with Classroom 2.0 this week. This seems almost like a facebook for teachers. It's a great way for teachers to collaborate with each other and see ideas that others put out there. There are lots of different groups to join to get the information that you need. I'm looking forward to doing some more exploring with it in the next few days.

Another week down

So after another week of class we have had some great discussions in class about privacy and the internet. I hadn't thought about it too much but I realized that privacy is an issue for some people and it may affect their work. For me, as a student, what I post, say and do don't directly affect me and my job. We also each had our own computers in class so were able to work at our own pace and get personal settings going right away.

We also worked with Twitter and looked at its benefits. Twitter is an easy way for others to know what you're up to on a day to day basis. People can post "tweets" that are then posted to people that follow you You have 140 characters to describe your current mood, activities, or random thoughts. I think this could be a great way to provide students with reminders of upcoming due dates or other assignments. It is also possible to have the messages sent to your cell phone so that you can be informed of people's activities at any moment.

We did a lot of playing around in class and I look forward to the readings this week and figuring out how to get twitter on my desktop. Hope everyone had a great weekend!

First two sessions of fun

After the first two class meetings, I have realized how important technology truly is in our society and how common it has become. I am very excited for this course because I think it will be a great way to explore and work with new pieces of technology. The most important thing for educators in using these technologies in their classrooms is knowledge and experience. The more experience I have using them and knowledge about how to work with them, the better able I will be able to implement them.

The first few classes have been somewhat introductory and prepared all of us to use new programs and machines. I think all members of the class bring great experience and knowledge to the table that we can share with each other. Each member can learn from another as we all learn together.

After our first meeting, we read some articles about distributed learning environments and how they are beneficial in education. It gives students, parents, and teachers the opportunity to communicate more efficiently and on their own time. This will also give low income students the opportunity to use computers even if their families can't afford them.

I really like that we are recording each class session because that way if someone misses class, they can just listen to the podcast and be all caught up. Also, if someone that was in class were to forget something or want to remember what was discussed, they can just listen to the recording. Another thing that I enjoyed was the activity using google docs. I had never worked with this program before and can see great ways that it could be used in the classroom.

I think the first two class meetings were very successful and I look forward to the next few sessions to learn about Twitter and other ways to create learning communities.