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.
For me 501 is more theory based course but some practical ideas are also tried to be given.Digital images is one of the common topics of both courses but the way we are handling it is different. In 501 we are using more basic tools like powerpoint to make a photostory while in 505 integrationof them in real classroom setting and effective usage of technology tools are more emphasized. Namely, it is more towards practice and giving some practical ideas at integration point.
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