A New Challenge: Digital Stores

Our topics for the evening included sorting out our social networking sites (Facebook, Class Blog and WebCT), Julia's resource review introducing podcasting, and an introduction to digital story telling in education. Looking at these topics together, out focus upon creating interactive, authentic learning environments for students is quite clear, even if the topics may seem somewhat disparate. In one sense, the video that Evrim shared about digital kids provides a connector for our evening's activities.

For the second time (Rebecca's review on blogging was the first time), the student resource review introduced a topic that we will soon be exploring in the class. Julia provided a thorough introduction to using podcasts in education and provided some useful resources.

Once again, we shared a topic (digital images) with 501 this week, and I imagine that the difference in approach to a similar application in the two courses is clear. Our emphasis in 505 is on the learning and teaching applications of the technology and thus our work with digital story telling. Most of our students should have taken 501 previously, and I am interested in student feedback on the issue of overlap in the two courses.

Evrim's introduction to iMovie was clear and well-sequenced, and I think having Raidel there to help with individual questions helped. I like the idea of beginning with the story boarding ideas and then moving to the images and Imovie. Next week's lab will provide more detailed iMovie capabilities and we will use Raidel once again. Raidel is one of our undergraduate teacher education students who has developed a strong expertise in technology, and I also like to have 505 class members see some of the work we are doing to educate new teachers who bring technology expertise to the classroom. I may ask Raidel to talk a little about her undergraduate technology experiences next week.

With the exception of one student who was ill last week, all students turned in their blogging assignments successfully in WebCT! A few students still need to work on making the goals of their assignments clear----in general, I do not see technology expertise as a goal for these assignments as I am more interesting in having students design methods to use the affordances of the technology to improve student content learning.

I need to make sure that all students have an opportunity to participate in our class discussions. We will continue to use small groups to help us work toward this goal and I also appreciate other suggestions for making this happen.

Blogs, Facebook, WebCT: An overkill?

I need to begin my weekly post by saying that I am really enjoying this 505 class. We have a diverse mix of students: classroom teachers, psychologists, a variety of subject matter experts, technology specialists and more. The various areas of expertise seem to be coming together in interesting ways as we create knowledge about technology and human learning together. With this particular group, I was certain than I was the one who has the mistake about the commenting on the blog assignment and I was right!

Our evening began with discussions on transfer of learning and then we ventured into virtual reality environments in schools (thanks to Teresa) and using technology to support the teaching of writing. "Evrim's" webspiration is a powerful concept mapping tool and the class produced some interesting products in the few minutes we spent on the Life in Iowa concept map.

We discussed our use of Facebook in the class and my sense was that most students are positive about this environment and feel quite comfortable in Facebook. And I learned how to stop the chat function---thanks! We do have three Web environments currently active for 505 (Facebook, WebCT, and the class blog) and I am interested in students' reactions and suggestions for dealing with these three environments.

Let the Blogging Begin!

Our major topic for the evening, blogging in the classroom, is well-connected with our discussions of Web 2.0, metacognition and constructivism. I did not feel, however, that I transitioned from the discussions into blogging very effectively. I immediately moved to the "how to" and the assignment for next week without relating this work to the earlier part of the evening. I will work on addressing this mistake next week.

Once again, the student resource presentation was a highlight of our evening. Ashley presented a very complete and thoughtful description of the use of clickers in the classroom, complete with some useful resource references. Now Evrim and I will work to create a lesson that uses the clickers in a discussion format in our class,

Building on Rebecca's presentation from last week, Evrim shared information about possible blogging sites (Blogger, Word Press, Edublogs, Blogmeister and Epals. It will be fun to see which sites are used in the assignment for next week.

After a quick glance, I am impressed with the Logo assignments----mind-sized bites and all!

Blogger does not seem to want me to upload images right now---so images from our evening together will follow. Note: Blogger did let me upload my pictures this afternoon, but I decided to keep this comment in my blog in case any of you have problems loading pictures in Blogger. My experience with this issue is that waiting a few hours seems to solve the problem!

A Song, Wordle, Blogging and Logo!

We began our evening with a song from YouTube entitled "Teachers Must Become Learners" (or something similar!) and then moved into a variety of activities. Our reading discussion groups started a little slow (at least mine did), but students warmed up as the discussion progressed. We used Woordle to summarize the discussions and ended up with some interesting featured words to explain. Rebecca began our resource reviews with a very complete and well-organized presentation on her use of blogging in her teaching. I am always pleased when the first resource review is strong as it creates a good model for others in the class. Thanks, Rebecca! Although we did not see Rebecca's examples, they will be available for viewing this week and Evrim and I will use them in class next week. Our Logo time was slightly rushed, but students seemed to connect with the powerful ideas of procedure and super-procedures. Evrim has posted the Logo resources on Facebook for students who want to do their assignments at home. Students using the free resources will need to copy their procedures and super-procedure into a word file and either copy their project graphic or sketch it. The projects (procedures and graphic) will be turned in as hard copy next week. All in all, I think we are off to a good start and I look forward to feedback from students.

Our First Night Together!

We successfully completed our first class together and I hope that the purpose, topics and procedures in the class are clear to all. I don't like all the talking (from me) on the first night, but I also want to be sure that expectations for the course are clear to all. There may be a way to do this without the talking---but I haven't found this way yet.
Our group is enthusiastic, diverse and each class member will bring different experiences to our work together. I am very pleased with the composition and chemistry of the class.
Rebecca will do our first resource review next week. I am pleased that we will be starting these reviews so soon.
And I am hoping Facebook will help me in my quest to learn everyone's name!