Final Day

Today was our last day of class. I was very glad our group had time to work. We needed it! We accomplished alot in the morning. Above is a picture of our group, the blue group.

After lunch, we got to present first. This helps take the pressure off. We had a basic presentation outline. I think it would have been better to delegate the outline a little better for more equal speaking time. I think it also would have been beneficial to discuss what main points we wanted to share with the class. I am proud of our work this week. We certainly put in a lot of effort and it was nice to see it come to completion!

Later in the blog, I have posted about authentic writing, this was a presentation that another group did. They asked us reflective questions to blog about during their presentation. Lisa, another class member talked about their presentation on her blog. She commented about how the teacher inservice is made more valuable when teachers are asked to think about how they will use what they have learned.

The other group that presented, presented on using nings. A ning could be a great collaborative tool. I think it will be a while before my third graders are able to comfortably use a ning, however it would be a great tool for teacher collaboration and networking.

Day 4 of Emerging Instructional Technologies Class

Today is day four of a five week on campus class. Yikes, I can't believe the class is almost completed. Today we learned how to make and edit movies using iMovie on Macs. I am amazed by how detailed the average person can get. By average, I simply mean non paid thousands of dollars to edit commercials and moives. I mean, Wow! Kids could use this program to get a sense of the profession. They could also capture class trips through film. I fear that I do not have a Mac and may not ever again get to play with iMovie (unless I go on campus and play with their computers). Our professor, Dr. Z, also gave us instrctions for a Windows version called Movie Maker. I am anxious to try it out and see if my students could use it with ease. Otherwise, it may have to be used by staff as an end of the year video or a video of the school to show at Meet the Teachers that occurs before the start of the school year.

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Last night, after I did my lovely blogs with video embedded, I was reading some fellow classmates' blogs. I had mentioned in an earlier blog about Steve Hagardon, creator of classroom 2.0 ning, and Chris Eller, a classmate of mine, also had posted about Steve Hagardon. He was talking about Steve's description of why social networking like nings are more valuable than a blogging. Chris wrote, "Blogging, according to Hargadon, has its limits. For one, it places the owner of the blog in the “expert” seat while commenters are in a secondary position. Second, blogging takes months to develop a readership. It takes a committed person to invest the time necessary to create valuable content and wait for the readers to discover you. "

I really liked Chris' comment about why blogs don't always work. To read more of Chris' blog you can link to it here: CENotebook

Guest Speakers

Wow today in class we had several guest speakers. The first thing that I must mention is that a few of them were not even in our classroom! They used a video conferincing called Skype and a virtual world called Second Life. I have not explored Skype yet, but I intend to. I have blogged about Second Life previously.

Bringing guest speakers to the class in this method gives students a sense of belonging to a larger world. I imagine it would also be easier to line up guest speakers since you are not limited to a location. My third graders would not be able to meet a speaker in Second Life, but could benefit from Skype. Since each classroom in my school has a projector, my students could easily be a part of the conversation. It reminds me a lot of ICN on a larger scale.

Our first guest speaker, Steve Hargadon, created the classroom 2.0 ning. He said something that really resonated with me and I believe will have the greatest, easiest impact in my teaching. He commented that in school he wrote many papers that he still has to this day, that were only viewed by his teacher, himself, and his family. Students want a broader audience for the work they do. By publishing student work on the web, then others could view it. This could be by posting to a class blog, class newsletter, or in the final step of the writing process, publish to the web instead of a nice handwritten copy.

Our other guest speakers expanded my awareness of educational uses of Second Life. I also heard about the NETS, which I suspect will be used by many schools in the future as they write their standards.