My EDM 310 Blog Assignments are Now Complete

I hope to continue to see everyone in other classes. I enjoyed meeting everyone and working with everyone. This was a great set of people to have as peers in a classroom. :)

Final Blog Assignment

I did learn how to do a PowerPoint and Spreadsheets. Not an over complicated one, but enough to be able to use it in future classes. I already knew how to use Word since it's been required since around 9th grade. I learned a few modifiers for making a website. I would have liked to learn actual coding. I know its a little more involved than what we looked at and reviewed. I would like to learn other applications that come with microsoft, probably even mac's like One Note, Publisher, Access, things that I could use later on.

Frumteacher Blog Nominee

I visited the Frumteacher blog because low and behold I was born in March! This blog at a first glance actually looked like all other blogs I've looked at, no interest to me. Then I started to read. Low and behold...It's a history blog! I loved how he started off with current events and then went back to the same place in a different time and talked about the history of it. History tied to current events is a must to keep students involved and entertained. The education world should create more blogs related to current events to link history, liturature, math, and science. I think we get more invloved and go down into that critical thinking if we start an open ended subject that is going on right now and create our own ways to solve the problem. Schools today are so standardized that students don't even think for themselves. They never learn, they never listen, and they aren't interested. Bring the classroom back to life with a little controversy, it gets the mind thinking and invloves all those important analytical skills students are not being taught anymore. Encourage questions, and write blogs about what they think is a good solution to the problems of today. Students aren't achieving high expectations because they are not push and challenged. They are given A,B,C,D assessments. Blogs are a wonderful way to see what your students have truely learned passed the guess and test theory of multiple choice assessments. Blogs can be used for any sujbect, any grade, and skill level. It just takes encouragement and topics students are actually interested in. See, now how hard was that to think up! This blog depicts what a classroom is all about. Using texts, references, and even the oh no! internet to involve a classroom. It has entertaining facts about the present and the past to link the subject together.

Wikipedia: Can It be Trusted?

I don't use Wikipedia already. I never need to look at it for sources of information when there are tons out there already without having to worry if it's been edited or not. I'm not scared its true or false, I just don't find it a great wealth of knowlege like so many others do. I don't use it for assignments because usually assignments are going to invlove up to date information that has been tamperd with at Wikipedia. I already found several things wrong with it for simplistic uses for those who are not computer literate. It's not the easiest to use when you are rushing to get assignments done. I've found that the important and historical searches are the same as you find in a text book. Since I already have the text book and know where it is in the text book, why search through an unreliable source. I don't think it will ever be reliable as long as you can edit its information. IF you feel it is inaccurate, why not put restraints and a check board of people to go over the information to make sure it is accruate. So its having to pay more people...so do tons of law firms, doctor offices, etc that pay others to sit a desk all day doing paper work and looking things up online. Why not do the same for a world wide used encyclopedia. I don't use it now, and I don't consider using Wikipedia anytime soon if ever to do my important research, homework, and classwork.

iTunes University

iTunes University I found this link first. Of course its going to be the Apple website since its iPod usage with iTunes. As a teacher I can create, distribute and access podcasts. On the opening page, homepage it has a list of courses and easy access links to to campus related events and information. It's accessible 24/7. Each course has its own page that is created by an administrator. As an instructor I can prepare the content (videos, recordings of lectures, assignments) and then upload it to the course page. Each course page can consist of mant or few tabs up to my discretion. There can be dropboxes for assignments. There is a user guide that is actually in dumbed down english so those who have never done this before can do it easily and painlessly. This can be an advantage. It's really like eCollege in a way, perhaps maybe a little more user friendly.

iPod in the Classroom

Well looking at the actual experiement that they have posted, I would think it would be a great tool to use if everyone could afford an iPod. I myself do not own one so that might be a draw back to actually incorporating it into the classroom. It would be a great tool according to the findings with recording lectures, discussions, and verbal feedback. It could be used for out in the field work to record sounds, capture field notes, and interviews. It'd be great for studying because you could listen to repeated original content of commercials, music audio books, rehersals and vocabulary lists. It's portable content to courses such as lectures, songs, speeches, Blackboard management tool, and podcasts. I myself have never used an iPod but it could be useful for students that can afford such a tool. I could use this in my classroom to relay notes, different historical speeches and/or lectures. This tool could help me review past lectures and help make them better for the next class. This opens my classroom to more knowledge and a variety of sources. It would depend on if they were funded though. I myself can live without a luxury as such but as technology grows they will need new ways to access information.

Herbie

I tried posting this one earlier. It seems to have fallen between the cracks so I'm posting it again just in case the other one never comes back. This is Herbie our outside cat. He's taking his afternoon nap on the bench. :)

Me in A Nut Shell

I have plenty of hair styles let me tell you. I'm naturally curly and this was one of my better pictures. This was a long time ago. I can also make it go straight, but I've yet to perfect it. Usually I just wore a hat that naturally straightened it after a few hours. This is a pic a lot of people seem to like of me. This picture is actually rather old.

Annabelle

This is my sister Kandice's cat Annabelle. She thinks she runs the house hold.

My Pixie

This is my sweet cat Pixie. She's so photogenic don't you think? :P

Seymour Papert

This is a site that I found on Seymour Papert Click here. It gave insite to what organizations he was in and what he had accomplished through his technological advancements. He's on the advisory board of MaMaMedia Inc. and LEGO Mindstorms. He is a cofounder of the Artificial Intelligence Lab. MaMaMedia is actually used for families to learn how to use the internet together. It's aimed towards kids 13 and younger helping develope exploration, experession, and exchange. IT also lets kids reply about world events. The Logo programming link took me to Link. It seems that it is a program in multiple languages that you can actualy download where students can experiement with making moves, science simulations, and mathematical experiements, and much more. There are programs for different age groups from K-12. There are workshops added weekly and there's a link to those. At the bottom it talks about the Seymour Papert Recovery Fund.

Disney

Little Mermaid
Riding Rides

A Cultural Revolution

I believe that what I said in the last blog still stands true. Students are moving towards watching and listening and ahve less focus or writing and reading. I see it everyday in classrooms that I have to observe. The students are more attentive if the have a movie in front of them on a Friday afternoon rather a book to read. I think in my classroom I'm going to have to share the difficulty of incorporating not only reading and writing but listening and watching. I would rather my students not have a television stamped in their face everyday or even once a week, but they are now raised in front of a television so now they learn in incriments of 15 minutes just like commecials on a television. Our technolgy grows by the hours and I will have to adapt to it just like every other teacher out there. I'll have to have technology available for those who have it at home and have other forms of learning for those who do not have high end technology at home. We are approaching a very difficult age and I will have to remember that though most are technologically advancing, there are still those that do read and write and do not have technology available to them as the rest of the class might. To adjust my curriculum for those types of situations shall be the toughest, and for any future teacher of this up coming age.

My Picture Change to Sepia in Picasa

My Picture Change to Black and White in Picasa

Books and Reading Going Extinct?!

I certainly agree that people are becoming less interested in reading when its readily available on the internet summarized and paraphrased so you don't even have to read a text book or reading assignment. For those casual readers, I would hope that people would still write books. I enjoy a good book, I especially love reading David Eddings' books. I would be disheartened if literary books became unknown in my generation. I do learn by watching and listening, but I also learn by reading. I have to have both usually. I believe that listening, watching and reading are all very important and should all take place in a classroom. Texts offer ideas that may not come to the top of an educators mind and may lend more incite than what is offered in the classroom. To those students who don't read a lot and watch and listen, that's something that needs to be refined and adjusted. Maybe its because in their experience reading was hard to accomplish because of disability or just never having the correct education to learn how to read effectively. I always loathed reading assigned reading, but out of class and picking what I want, I love reading. Probably why I do better writing reports on what I want rather than what a teacher has assigned or a list I had to choose from that I didn't find anything interesting on. Reading is an incite into other worlds of images, immagination, thought processes and knowledge. We should embrace it, not let it fall through the cracks of technology.

Philippines On Blog

It's not a blogger blog but it is a blog. Click Here , . A separate little blog post from each area they visit. How cool is that. They may have individual class blogs but I have yet to find them if they do. Interesting to see a prayer request at the beginning of a blog. You don't see many of those on the United States side that's for sure. It's a ministry school of course. That's the first school of ministry I've seen and I'm very glad to see all walks of life stepping up to the new technology at had. It's good to see school on the web all around the world. Intercommunication is at hand. If we United States people would get up and take inniative to learn another language or two I'd really be impressed. I don't know if this is considered an international school, but it's an international traveling school. I don't really know where the home base is so to speak. :)

Straight Down To Learning and Class: The Teacher Blog!

This guy gets straight to the point! Click Here He teaches English courses at Salt Lake Community College. He has those important links you have to remember about. There's the handouts if you miss out on class discussion and handouts, need to remember that one. There's a link about his portfolio, those *things* we keep hearing about! It might be nice to sneak and take a peek at what's in his little link there. He has a blog roll but you have to sign in of course so you can't take a peek at his classes activities but at as student you probably have a lot of access to other outside links that might help improve learning or projects. Then there's all the Meta stuff that I don't know yet, but I'm sure we'll touch base on that soon I hope. Otherwise there's the link to the idividual courses listed and handouts for most. Each individual site has the syllabus and handouts, course requirements, that sort of thing. What a student should know. No pictures up there so I'm not sure if it matters what the picture is?

ELL, ESL, and EFL Teacher - He's Amazing!

Oh my gosh! I don't even know where to begin with this one teacher I found. He teachers ELL, ESL, and EFL classes at Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento, California. His blog in monsterous. See For Yourself It has his lesson plans on the side with links. It has links to vocabulary, dictionairies, teacher resources, etc etc. His list is huge! There's a list of articles on the side to click and read. His list of awards is outstanding. Then there's the links to his students blogs as well. He has his favorite links and posts listed next. In his own blog he uses the tool from Google just as we are and is experiementing just like we are with the google tools. He can basically teach from a blog and never step foot in a classroom. This man has been using Blogger to his advantage. It has so many options available and its all a link away.

International Teacher's and Blogger

I found an interesting Blogger today while i was searching for educators that use Blogger. It's a Mathematics professor. Guess what? It's a Blogger for blogs. He has tons of helpful blogs for many subjects as well as a blog link to other teachers blogs to help teachers out in the classroom. How cool is that? Click Here . He has seperate links for Borderland, to help understand students. There's also a link to CoolCat Teacher Blog ( I love the title, so cute) for educators to communicate with eachother and share ideas. And the list goes on...Not sure what the links on the side are for, I'm not the complete computer guru to understand what XHTML and XFN is, eheh. He is the Department Head of Mathematics at Daniel McIntyre Collegiate Institute in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

Creating Links and Adding Pictures to A Blog

To add a link to a page we can either write the html code or use the tools that Blogger has built in. The tool to add a link looks like a link to a chain. This is a link to The Fischbowl , a blog used in training teachers in technology at the Arapahoe CO High School in Littleton, CO.

Here is a picture of Arapahoe High School.

ACCESS

Apparently this site helps you innovate ideas for the classroom. It also gives you ideas of how to motivate your class. This site also helps you exapand your knowledge, hopefully a never ending knowledge. Teachers need to continue learning and need to grow with their students as well. This site will encourage the use of technology to those teachers taht embrace the technological era I believe.
I noticed it gave a few links for things teachers can visit themselves. The links were used for videoconferencing. I saw one that had virtual tours for the classroom, which is a good idea if you can't afford to take students place or its too expensive, or if it's just something that happened to be interesting and was part of a class lesson that day. Oh, yes, and for those science gurus, there's a site for NASA LIVE. That's a great tool for those science teachers of any grade.

ALEX in the Classroom

ALEX is a great tool for the classroom and especially outside the classroom. I love how I can look up the Course of Study for my Lesson Plans, yes, I know all about those and not looking forward to the paper work, but my students and career will be worth it. When it comes time to turn in my Lesson Plans, they'll be complete, why? Because there are tons of suggestions, links, websites listed for me to browse and gather ideas for lesson plans. There's no need to completely stress out over a lesson plan where there's help just a click away. I'm sure they are more than appropriate and millions of teachers use them each year.
Students, you can't leave the students out. There's a page all for them. It will be agood tool to give my students to have and look at. There's help on every subject with links and websites at their finger tips. This will be a great tool and students who don't have access at home will more than likely have time in class or after school to use it. I need to take advantage of these resources to make my teaching easier and their learning more effective.

What I've Learned About ALEX

The first time I saw this website was actually in EEC 300. It is one of the greatest tools out there for beginning teachers like myself and for those who have been out in the field for decades. The first thing I notice available is the Course of Study. This CoS will help teachers start their lesson plans, since principals might want a load down on everyday or once a week of what you have planned and it has to have the CoS written on it. It ranges from K-12, so there's no reason to get stumped on what you feel needs to be taught and what order to teach it in.
The next thing I went to was the Web Links, which takes you to Administrator pages, Teacher pages, and student pages. The Teacher pages linked plenty for each classroom subject and even others such as counceling, lesson plans and even grants. Then you click on one of those, and it gives you a long list of actual websites. This is a great tool I'm telling you. I will have to save these sites for when I have become a teacher I can refer back to them. The Administator Link takes you to things about administration, I really would have to do some research to completely understand what those links are about, but its usually the Department of Education and other Links. The Student Web link takes you to actual subjects. Some of these sites would be very usuful for my future students and I won't hesitate to direct them to it.
Yes, lesson plans ladies and gentlemen. This sight has lesson plans. Just select the grade, the subject, and a bar to type what you want if you know what you are looking for. I think it's a little new because I searched some and there were no lesson plans, but by the time we graduate it will probably be full of helpful ideas.
There's always the search link if you aren't sure what you are looking for, I tend to use it a lot myself. Not sure what the Personal Workspace is since you have to sign in to access it, I'm sure its for registered teachers. The Professional learning would be to help ourselves out as educators learning new styles of learning, new ideas for the classroom and so on and so forth. Distant Access actually would be classes that not all schools hold I do believe with web enhancement. A good tool for those who can't what they need from a classroom.

You Tube Video About the Future

My first reaction was this video was going to about what my boyfriend has been telling for months now. I was on the line of correct, but then it went on to how much information will be produced in one day, a few seconds. Someday in my lifetime a computer will be more intelligent that the most intelligent human beings. It's a scarey idea to try and visualize, but it's happening right now as I right about this topic. In a way, humans will be obsolete. Where will teachers stand in my future to come? If information is published that fast, will it soon be to the point that I'll have to continue my education after my college degree and Master's just to keep up with technology? That video is mind boggling. It may not be accurate in the years, after all it is an estimate, but the day will come when computers and technology will take over the world, it is right now, espcially when that $100 computer program reaches all second world countries.

Here's a Little Taste of my Power Point Presentation

In my Power Point presentation I'll talk about one of my hobbies. I don't want to give away what it is. *shhh* It's a surprise. I'll talk about my special someone of course. Then there's always room for pets, and I think it'll be fun to talk about those wonderful creatures I have sharing my life...I'll talk about me a little too, but it's important to see what's around me to understand me a little better. :)

All About Me

My name is Kristen Shepherd. I have two sisters, two step-sisters, and 4 cats. I do like playing video games despite my appearance of a quiet library type personality. Don't get me wrong, I do love to read, especially the David Eddings series. I love the Final Fantasy video game series and on my off time from everyday life I play World of Warcraft with my sisters and friends. I use to be sandy blonde before I made the mistake of dying my hair black, but hopefully if everything goes well this weekend that will be remedied. I am a short 4'11" tall. Short people rule! That's a very short summary of who I am. I don't want to give too much away. :)

My Blog Before Wednesday

Just posting to say I remembered I needed to post a blog to show I remembered how.

My First Blog

Just saying hi from my first blog. I am very excited to learn how to post my first official blog.