Here is my Pecha Kutcha I made for T4T and presented in class.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Monday, April 19, 2010
Thursday, March 25, 2010
March 25: Reflection on "Orientation in Second Life"
Second Life is a virtual world. One type is the Virtally Linked: London Community. In this video, the folks at London Metropolitan University explain how they have designed ways to introduce the system to new users.
First, they tried handouts, but those were ineffective. Next, they tried allowing students to explore the system completly on their own, but this did not work either. Finally, what has proven effective is providing orientation in a similar way game designers introduce new players, by guiding the user to infer what to do.
As Deborah Butler said, some, such as myself, see this as a bit far fetched, strange, and involving privacy issues. Honestly, I don't know what to do with this in my classroom! It seems silly to me. Can students create historical characters and allow them to interact with each other? Can they create avatars that accuratly resemble the real people, or at least come close? If anyone has suggestions, please let me know.
Out of curiosity, I visited the London in Second Life website and found some reasons for which they believe people can use virtual spaces. For example, users can plan a real trip to London and meet people from the city before going, users can share ideas and hopes, and to interact like a real community. But, I am still not sure how to use this to enhance learning in the classroom.
First, they tried handouts, but those were ineffective. Next, they tried allowing students to explore the system completly on their own, but this did not work either. Finally, what has proven effective is providing orientation in a similar way game designers introduce new players, by guiding the user to infer what to do.
As Deborah Butler said, some, such as myself, see this as a bit far fetched, strange, and involving privacy issues. Honestly, I don't know what to do with this in my classroom! It seems silly to me. Can students create historical characters and allow them to interact with each other? Can they create avatars that accuratly resemble the real people, or at least come close? If anyone has suggestions, please let me know.
Out of curiosity, I visited the London in Second Life website and found some reasons for which they believe people can use virtual spaces. For example, users can plan a real trip to London and meet people from the city before going, users can share ideas and hopes, and to interact like a real community. But, I am still not sure how to use this to enhance learning in the classroom.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Results From My Classmates Eating Habits Survey
In class on Wed. March 10,2010, our class made surveys for each other to take. My survey set out to find the dining out habits of my classmates, and the results were interesting.
Out of 8 completed surveys, I found most prefer to eat Mexican food when dining out, while my favorite, Italian, was not once mentioned.
Also, 7 out of 8 responded they would order either a dessert or appetizer when eating out. From these, 4 out of 7 would order both appetizer and dessert, while 2 out of 7 would order only dessert, and 1 out of 7 would order only an appetizer. This suprised me because I rarely order either.
Out of 8 completed surveys, I found most prefer to eat Mexican food when dining out, while my favorite, Italian, was not once mentioned.
Also, 7 out of 8 responded they would order either a dessert or appetizer when eating out. From these, 4 out of 7 would order both appetizer and dessert, while 2 out of 7 would order only dessert, and 1 out of 7 would order only an appetizer. This suprised me because I rarely order either.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
March 4: Relection on Sam's Digital Youth Portrait
Sam is a 13 year-old girl who is comfortable playing with technology. She is good at math and music, and is very creative according to her peers, parents, and teachers.
She is able to use technology to help her in school. In English class, she had to read a book, but did not understand it, so she downloaded it to her phone, and by doing so, the book was read to her and she could better understand it. I'm not sure how I feel about this. If she is struggling to understand, yes, she needs to find help. I'm sure she isn't having a book read to her all the time, but that could be a bad habit to get into. Everyone needs to be able to read text, analyze it, and come to some conclusion. If you have it read to you all the time, you become dependent on the person or device reading. I would encourage asking help from the teacher or form a student study group where everyone reads the book, understand what you can, and contribute what you can to the group.
Sam also used technology in Science class by creating a weather report from another planet using a video software. Sam really enjoys making videos. She said she has had a camera since she was a child. She enjoys directing her friends in creating a story.
Sam uses a virtual piano online to teach her how to play the piano. I thought that was awesome! Sam seems to be good at teaching herself.
Sam said that digital media allows her freedom of expression and to be someone else. She learns teamwork, problem-solving, and strategy from a game she plays online with other people.
I think the biggest take-away for me was just how much Sam uses technology to help her in her classes; it helps her improve, and to be creative.
I would like to reach out to the students in my class who like to create. I did a project in high school in history class where we had to make a video with other students about an event we had learned in class. My group chose the anti-Vietnam War protests during the 1970s. We had a lot of fun. We had to research the topic and then get together to make a video. I think that is a great way to learn about an event in history, to learn teamwork and collaboration, and to practice with technology.
She is able to use technology to help her in school. In English class, she had to read a book, but did not understand it, so she downloaded it to her phone, and by doing so, the book was read to her and she could better understand it. I'm not sure how I feel about this. If she is struggling to understand, yes, she needs to find help. I'm sure she isn't having a book read to her all the time, but that could be a bad habit to get into. Everyone needs to be able to read text, analyze it, and come to some conclusion. If you have it read to you all the time, you become dependent on the person or device reading. I would encourage asking help from the teacher or form a student study group where everyone reads the book, understand what you can, and contribute what you can to the group.
Sam also used technology in Science class by creating a weather report from another planet using a video software. Sam really enjoys making videos. She said she has had a camera since she was a child. She enjoys directing her friends in creating a story.
Sam uses a virtual piano online to teach her how to play the piano. I thought that was awesome! Sam seems to be good at teaching herself.
Sam said that digital media allows her freedom of expression and to be someone else. She learns teamwork, problem-solving, and strategy from a game she plays online with other people.
I think the biggest take-away for me was just how much Sam uses technology to help her in her classes; it helps her improve, and to be creative.
I would like to reach out to the students in my class who like to create. I did a project in high school in history class where we had to make a video with other students about an event we had learned in class. My group chose the anti-Vietnam War protests during the 1970s. We had a lot of fun. We had to research the topic and then get together to make a video. I think that is a great way to learn about an event in history, to learn teamwork and collaboration, and to practice with technology.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Feb.26: Reflection on Paula White's "Parallel Play or Collaboration: Leveraging the Wiki Platform for High Quality Work"
Here, Paula, a 5th grade teacher, introduces her wiki called WikiThink, which raises some very interesting questions about deep collaboration, creation in the classroom, and meaningful interaction between students and teachers such as... What is collaboration? What is the purpose of a wiki? Which are best? What are kids doing on them? Are they regurgitating or creating? Working alone or collectively?
I am always curious how to get students engaged. And, what exactly does it mean to be engaged? Paula mentions the 8 Qualities of Engaging Work, which include personal experience, choice, novelty/variety, learning with others, sense of audience, clear/modeled expectations, and more. The students, she said, have to want to be connected. It needs to be more than teacher-created structures and more student-created structures or groups collaborating on their own and not because the teacher told them to. This has been the greatest takeaway for me. Along with this, she says, "relationships built on honor and respect between people coupled with quality tasks is the formula for engagement." This is, of course, something I would like to foster in my own classroom. I want students to be able to work with other students and use their own strengths to research and create something meaningful. After all, I believe it is those lessons learn that mean the most to us, that we learn the most from. We, as teachers, have to not "play school" but teach our kids how to retain information and then apply what they have learned. " School is not the point, but a path."
I am always curious how to get students engaged. And, what exactly does it mean to be engaged? Paula mentions the 8 Qualities of Engaging Work, which include personal experience, choice, novelty/variety, learning with others, sense of audience, clear/modeled expectations, and more. The students, she said, have to want to be connected. It needs to be more than teacher-created structures and more student-created structures or groups collaborating on their own and not because the teacher told them to. This has been the greatest takeaway for me. Along with this, she says, "relationships built on honor and respect between people coupled with quality tasks is the formula for engagement." This is, of course, something I would like to foster in my own classroom. I want students to be able to work with other students and use their own strengths to research and create something meaningful. After all, I believe it is those lessons learn that mean the most to us, that we learn the most from. We, as teachers, have to not "play school" but teach our kids how to retain information and then apply what they have learned. " School is not the point, but a path."
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Feb.17: Reflection on Joyce Valenza's "Wizard of Apps"
First, I want to say what a great job the Theatre II class did on making that video! It was funny, creative, and informative!
High school students and their librarian make a parody of the "Wizard of Oz "to help us learn about Ethical Digital Citizenship, Research Apps, Triangulation, PLN, Presenting to an Audience, and Communication/Collaboration.
In the digital citizenship segment, "Glenda" told us about transformative thinking in deciding which sites are good and which are bad. She mentioned noodletools. This is a site I have used several times for making works cited pages in high school. I would recommend it to my students. Some of the research apps "Glenda" mentioned would be very helpful in my own history classes. For example, wikis and blogs (both of which I intend to use extensively in my own classroom), Google's many search options, online database widgets (Ebsco, Gale, Proquest, JSTOR, NYTimes)- all of which are essential to historical research and which I plan to make use of in teaching students how to research. I could put these widgets on a classroom blog and that way the students could have easy access to all their research materials. She presented Google News Timelines, for example. I browsed this. I like it, but I'm not sure I would recommend it as a first line of defense because there are way too many ads cluttering the screen...distracting!
She also mentioned triangulation, a word of which I have never heard. It is basically a filter for garbage (GIGO: garbage in, garbage out). She advises to ask questions of the sources found online.
She provided a dozen creative websites from which students could find pictures, make movies, play with words, etc... I could use voicethread as a tool in the classroom by allowing students to create reviews of chapters on voicethread, or even to present a chapter or part of a chapter, to the class. The best way to learn is to teach others.
"Glenda" also told us about communication and collaboration. One of my favorite tools she introduced here was the idea of Skyping an author. What a great idea! I think it would be more exciting for librarians, English teachers, or elementary teachers. But, I could use it as a French teacher, perhaps.
All in all, "Glenda" presented a great collection of resources. I'm still browsing them all. There are so many! One site I looked into, out of curiosity, was wordle.net. Here, students and teachers can play with words to create some interesting configurations. I played it myself, and I thought it was cool. In brainstorming how to use this, I thought of: students could use it in presentations, I could use it for an introduction into a new unit, or better yet a review of a unit. The students can see all the key words to study.
Great video!
High school students and their librarian make a parody of the "Wizard of Oz "to help us learn about Ethical Digital Citizenship, Research Apps, Triangulation, PLN, Presenting to an Audience, and Communication/Collaboration.
In the digital citizenship segment, "Glenda" told us about transformative thinking in deciding which sites are good and which are bad. She mentioned noodletools. This is a site I have used several times for making works cited pages in high school. I would recommend it to my students. Some of the research apps "Glenda" mentioned would be very helpful in my own history classes. For example, wikis and blogs (both of which I intend to use extensively in my own classroom), Google's many search options, online database widgets (Ebsco, Gale, Proquest, JSTOR, NYTimes)- all of which are essential to historical research and which I plan to make use of in teaching students how to research. I could put these widgets on a classroom blog and that way the students could have easy access to all their research materials. She presented Google News Timelines, for example. I browsed this. I like it, but I'm not sure I would recommend it as a first line of defense because there are way too many ads cluttering the screen...distracting!
She also mentioned triangulation, a word of which I have never heard. It is basically a filter for garbage (GIGO: garbage in, garbage out). She advises to ask questions of the sources found online.
She provided a dozen creative websites from which students could find pictures, make movies, play with words, etc... I could use voicethread as a tool in the classroom by allowing students to create reviews of chapters on voicethread, or even to present a chapter or part of a chapter, to the class. The best way to learn is to teach others.
"Glenda" also told us about communication and collaboration. One of my favorite tools she introduced here was the idea of Skyping an author. What a great idea! I think it would be more exciting for librarians, English teachers, or elementary teachers. But, I could use it as a French teacher, perhaps.
All in all, "Glenda" presented a great collection of resources. I'm still browsing them all. There are so many! One site I looked into, out of curiosity, was wordle.net. Here, students and teachers can play with words to create some interesting configurations. I played it myself, and I thought it was cool. In brainstorming how to use this, I thought of: students could use it in presentations, I could use it for an introduction into a new unit, or better yet a review of a unit. The students can see all the key words to study.
Great video!
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