My EDM 310 Blog Assignments are now complete.

Yeah! My blogs are complete, at least I hope so anyway. To my classmates, I really enjoyed having this class with you and learning about you in your presentaions. I hope that everybody had a good time and learned a lot of stuff that you can use in your future carreer. I think we were a good class that had fun and worked very well together. Thanks to all the people who brought in cookies and candies during class, I really enjoyed it! Good luck to everybody in everything you do!!

Wed. Dec 3

1. We really did learn a LOT in this class. I really appreciate Dr. Strange and his method for teaching this class. We covered so many things from using google presentation, to spreadsheets, to word processing, podcast, blogs, igoogle pages, and itunes. I did not have a google acount before entering this class, I love how all of this is free, and I even used Google presentaions in another class for a short slideshow in fear that my USB drive would not work when I got in the room. What an easy alternative, preparing my presentation online in Google and if needed, sharing with someone else online or collaberating if I needed help with it. Even though I will be teaching younger children, which may not be able to deal with computers as well as literate students, I may want to add computer in my class as far as childrens learning games and so on to give the children a feel for the computer.
2. I can't recall anything that I wanted to learn and did not. I really had a good time and believe I can actually put to use the material that I learned.
Thanks Dr. Strange

My classmates blog

I read Ashley Cleavland's blog, she and Shyane Fant were my partners in our podcast assignment. Ashley did a good job on her blogs. In each one I noticed she answered the questions and put down the information that Dr. Strange requested of us in our instructions. Her blogs were informative and I picked up certain things from different posts and assignments that I maybe did not realize when I did my posts.
I never really knew what the purpose of a blog was or how they worked until I entered this class. I think that they are a cool thing and teachers in middle and high school settings should use them. Blogs could be used as an evaluation type thing for teachers to view say what students should be learning about, or they could be used to bring classmates together by having them communicate with one another or with students from different countries, cities, or states by commenting or discussing certain topics.
I want to teach elementary school, so I don't think that my students will be at the computer level, but if I were to move up in grade levels or for some reason my students are really advance I would have them make and obtain a blog for my classroom. There are many ways that blogs can be used, I guess you could just experiment and decide which way you like best.

ACCESS visit

Today I visited the ACCESS lab at Baldwin County High School. Misty Morries who is a technology coordnator and also a teacher of government, history, and AP government assisted me in my visit to the lab. In adition to teaching regular classes at the school, she also teaches classes on ACCESS which involve students completing assignments, quizzes and so forth but it is all web based. I really enjoyed my visit and learned a lot about the many different things that can be done in the ACCESS labs. The part of ACCESS that allows students to have class in a room but not with the actuall teacher, but more of a mediator to make sure that they are completing theri work reminds me a lot of our online classes here at South, and ecompanion. In other classes, students can actually see their teacher on a screen along with sound and any other audo the teacher wants to use such as power point or video. The teacher can also see the students and here questions if they may have any. Mrs. Morries also showed me that there are many classes offered to students through this program. Something that I thought was very interesting was that in some schools there are only a few students who want to take a certain class, lets say german. The school can not hire a teacher fore just a few students, so if avaliable to the school, they can allow their students to take this class online with a teacher from another school through the ACCESS lab. This was very cool and probably helps students who need these classes but can not get them from a regular classoom setting. This lab also helps the student be responsable, having to submit assignments to a drop box and learn how technology works in diferent ways. I hoe to learn more about the ACCESS lab and maybe even sit in on an actual class, or maybe even teach one some day.

Our Podcasts

As I listened to the podcast from my class, overall I think that everyone did a goood job, but there were areas that we could have improved in. The first podcast I listened to was Randy Pausch's Last Lecture I myself really enjoyed this lecture as well as those creating this podcast. I like how on every podcast Dr. Strange describes what the classes are doing, and the numbers of podcast and the people involved. I noticed that just about all podcast start out the same by Dr. Strabge, I really enjoy this, because of course we know what is going on but some one may just listen to one podcast, not all of them so they need to be informed as what is going on as well. Dr. Strange also knew what he was going to say, no long breaks there where no long breaks. The podcast for the most part went very well, they started with giving us information on Mr. Pausch, and what his lecture was about then moved on to his dreams, road blocks and so forth. We need to be sure that we do not repeat what has already been said, so the audience or listiner dose not get bored. Quotes were used and how this lecture could be used by theachers was a plus, good job guys.
The next podcast I listened to was You Tube as an educational tool. I like again how the audience is informed on what you tube is in case some one may not know. We are told what is avaliable on you tube and who can get on you tube and that it is free. The way that teachers could use you tube is discussed so maybe a teacher could boaden thier view on this subject if they did not realize it before. This was a good podcast with good information on how to use this online source, but did not really describe in detail how teachers could use it.
The third podcast I listened to was how Facebook could be used as an educational tool. There was less interaction, because of the two people involved instead of our normal three. Other than their shortage of woman power, I think they did a fine job describing what face book was and then how it could be used.
In my podcast discussing sites for elementary school teachers, I think my group did a fairly good job. There where a few sites covered and hopefully anyone who listens and needs help in this area gains some good information and can use this podcast and maybe even share it with other teachers. What I wold like to see in all of our podcasts, is more of a conversation rather than each person discussing something and moving on to another subject.
Overall, I think we did a pretty good job in creating out very own podcast. Maybe we should have practiced in front of class, becasue in some measure I could tell some of us were nervous. We were able to use notes, which was a good thing, but maybe we could have organized them a little more because I noticed that while we knew the material, it was not really in good order. There was jumping around and a few pauses because we din't know were we should go next or who was going to start it off. The only other thing I noticed but I think it's just habit for some people is the umms... try not to say umm while presenting or in the process of being recorded.
GOOD JOB CLASS!!!!