rss readers

RSS readers are helpful to teachers and students because it is a common place where they can put up papers and assignments where they can be retrieved easily from any location. RSS readers are also helpful because they allow parents to interact with the teachers and their students. parents can see what websites their children are going to in class. students can then access these sites from home or vacation. they are available to the student whenever they need them.

I chose Diigo as my bookmarking page, i like how it is set up, it is easy to follow and to navigate in.



Excel is an asset to the classroom because it is an application that can be used in the classroom. in high schools excel can be used to help students formulate a monthly budget with incoming earnings and outgoing expenses. It can be used to graph a students test scores. a printout can be obtained and shown to a parent who's child was struggling or is not starting to struggle. Parents like to see something they understand. it would be easier to see that the scores are progressively increasing if it were in a bar graph. excel can be used to track textbooks. teachers can link what text book was handed out to what student. when they need to track a text book they can look it up by student or by number just by running a filter. in chemistry and biology you can have students make tables in excel. they are easier to create in excel than in word. they could then import them into word. the teacher can individually track each students test answers and point value. then they can have word figure out the total score and then the percentage. Math teachers could teach students how to solve trigonometry equations using excel. to show them another tool to help them with their homework. the student then can create a picture using word art and put borders on it and print them out as a side project. it can be a picture pertaining to the subject matter.

google apps

I think google docs is a great tool. It would have been useful to have when i was in high school. it would have been a centralized place to go and retrieve worksheets. I lost worksheets so often in high school. it would also have been a place where parents could have gone to check and see if their children have homework because you can group the docs in many different ways. You can edit papers, conduct surveys. It would be a good idea to keep emergency lessons on here for a substitute teacher in case of an emergency.
Google calendar is also a good tool. you could post homework due dates and test dates on it. the teacher could also have a separate one for themselves where they could keep important dates and meetings in. Parents can also use it to make sure their child is studying for a test that is coming up, or is working on a project that is due soon.
I found two lesson plans on google docs, the first one being titled Collaborative Lab Experiments. it is a lab that shows the rate of photosynthesis in plants in different environments. the students do the lab separately then come together to explain the results. http://docs.google.com/View?id=ddv49vkt_14dv8hdtf6 The second lesson plan is entitled History of Life on Earth the students create calendars to try to decide what will happen in the next calendar year. they then share their calendars with the teacher.http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/edu/lesson_plans.html

language

The language that is used today is complicated to people who are not of the net gen. Last weekend I tried to explain to my mother that I had to Post a Blog in this class. A two minute explanation of this class turned into a ten minute lesson on blogging and the purpose of it. I had heard the term many times before and knew what it was so it was not foreign to me. To the generation that came before mine, the language we speak today is confusing. My mother said that I might as well have been speaking greek. Flickr, podcasts, you tube is completely new to most of them. My mother was amazed when i pulled up the music video for one of her favorite songs on You tube. all I could do was laugh in amazement as she began to look up everything she could think of on you tube.
I to not think that the tech language we use today is a bad thing, it is just the evolution of the english language to fit the evolution of our world. It is easier to say I looked it up on wikipedia than to say I looked it up on a free online encylopedia that anyone can edit. it just saves so much time.
When it comes to R/W programs I knew what some of them were but i never that they were considered R/W programs. Social bookmarking is still new to me it is something that I am interested in learning. having a place to go that you can create and edit something, and then change on a whim. I have never used google docs, but it looks interesting enough to learn.

week 2

The digital natives and Net Gen articles were very informative. The articles reflected accurately on how my friends and I are different learners than our parents. While I'm doing my homework i have myspace up and my cell phone next to the keyboard. My mom can not read the newspaper with the television on in the next room. She finds it distracting. I find that it is true what they say about the Net Gen's, we are more concerned about the speed at which we can get tasks accomplished then with the accuracy. The generation that I grew up in is completely wired. I would have a panic attack if I left my phone at home. I've already been late to work because i had to turn around for my phone. While in high school and college I always had the television on while I was studying or doing homework, it helped me concentrate, without it my mind wanders and i cannot accomplish anything. It is important to integrate technology into the classroom, we cannot expect children to forget that their phone is in their pocket and that it is an outlet from the boring class. The only thing that worries me are the generations to come. Am i going to be teaching biology via podcast so my students can sit in front of me for an hour with their ipod touch and watch me teach on a 3 inch screen instead of in person. Will the next generation need to attend school at all or will they switch to online only schooling. What happens to the social skills that students learn in an academic environment.

first blog

This is my first time ever blogging. this class is fun.