Thank EVERYONE for making this such an interactive class - very supportive and quite interesting! Hope to work with those continuing in the graduate pursuit and wish the best to those who are nearing the end of their academic journey.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
What an interesting ride...
I have been very impressed with the wide variety of products offered by the members of the class. The wikis were very professionally done, there were some very useful blogs created and many were very innovative in the design. I thought the presentation housed online was pretty nifty and will likely use that idea in the future. My favorite by far was Pipes and the companion listing, which escapes my mind at the moment, but is safely tucked away in my Diigo bookmarks. I have a fixation with anything organizational in nature. :-)
Google Wave
It was somewhat of a surprise that Google pulled the plug on the Wave after what I thought was such a short period of time. It has been a bit over a year, hardly long enough for most to learn about the application, but in the 2.0 world I guess that is long enough. The beta testing on Microsoft Office 2010 seemed almost as long...it makes you wonder just exactly what the indicators are for success of a new application. If it had been up to me, Facebook would never have been a success, because I refused to get on board with it until January 2009 and never did much more than create a profile and add some favorite metal bands to Myspace. IT all just leaves me scratching my head....
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
What I have learned in this class...
The most surprising thing I have learned is that even though I have worked in and around "Web 2.0" for the last three years of my career, it is WAY bigger than I had even imagined. There is an academic side of it that I never considered and much beyond the scope of this course. In my readings for the social media paper, I came across a fairly extensive amount of research from the learning theory direction, psychological direction, and social science perspective, including anthropological research! (The anthropological research was quite interesting, by the way.)
The most practical things I learned were the many different ways that these tools could be applied, in a scope far beyond any I had considered in my perspective as a K-8 classroom teacher. It was pretty humbling, but reconfirmed what I had espoused to my students: This is way too big and changing far too rapidly for any of us to become an expert on it - we all have to learn from each other.
I rely on usage of shared materials quite heavily in my profession as a teacher and have learned of several additional resources that will be of use to me in both fields. My production of learning resource has been limited to creation of educational technology instruction, including Microsoft Office applications.
I have had the opportunity to meet several interesting people in the class and have really enjoyed the varying perspectives presented. If it makes you think about alternate perspectives, it's a good thing! Sometimes we all have a tendency to get tunnel vision about a topic, based on our own paradigms, so all the variations have been great practice in seeing things from a potential client's perspective.
The most practical things I learned were the many different ways that these tools could be applied, in a scope far beyond any I had considered in my perspective as a K-8 classroom teacher. It was pretty humbling, but reconfirmed what I had espoused to my students: This is way too big and changing far too rapidly for any of us to become an expert on it - we all have to learn from each other.
I rely on usage of shared materials quite heavily in my profession as a teacher and have learned of several additional resources that will be of use to me in both fields. My production of learning resource has been limited to creation of educational technology instruction, including Microsoft Office applications.
I have had the opportunity to meet several interesting people in the class and have really enjoyed the varying perspectives presented. If it makes you think about alternate perspectives, it's a good thing! Sometimes we all have a tendency to get tunnel vision about a topic, based on our own paradigms, so all the variations have been great practice in seeing things from a potential client's perspective.
Interesting statistics on 2.0
I would like to post a couple of TeacherTube videos I have used in my Computer Applications classes. They present some fascinating statistics about the advent and advancement of technology.
I had a dual purpose in presenting them to eighth graders. The first was to impress upon them the necessity of expanding their technology usage beyond social media. The second, more obvious reason, was to have them compare styles of three to five presentations and discuss what worked and what didn't when constructing a powerful presentation. They noticed differences in graphical representations, background music, speed of transitions, etc., and noted these in their rubrics and subsequent analyses. It was never necessary to give them a list of "Thou Shalts" when they created their own.
They were quite taken aback at the information presented, although the original presentations were based on statistics from 2006. I think you may find some of them quite alarming. I have chosen their second favorite because the pace made the information more digestible, and the most recent because the stats are more current.
You do not need to create an account, but you will have to suffer through a message form their sponsors - I will post both links in the body of this post and the general link is clickable from the Title.
Student's Second Choice
Most Recent
I had a dual purpose in presenting them to eighth graders. The first was to impress upon them the necessity of expanding their technology usage beyond social media. The second, more obvious reason, was to have them compare styles of three to five presentations and discuss what worked and what didn't when constructing a powerful presentation. They noticed differences in graphical representations, background music, speed of transitions, etc., and noted these in their rubrics and subsequent analyses. It was never necessary to give them a list of "Thou Shalts" when they created their own.
They were quite taken aback at the information presented, although the original presentations were based on statistics from 2006. I think you may find some of them quite alarming. I have chosen their second favorite because the pace made the information more digestible, and the most recent because the stats are more current.
You do not need to create an account, but you will have to suffer through a message form their sponsors - I will post both links in the body of this post and the general link is clickable from the Title.
Student's Second Choice
Most Recent
Finally figured out the editing pf previous posts!
Isn't THAT special??!! (Now that I know most of you are my age, I'm sure you'll get the Church Lady reference) Especially in the last week of the class. lol - BUT, as many of us have noted and Vanessa has pointed out, this is just a jumping off point, an exposure class. I think I will try to keep this up, or at least move over to my more informal blog that I had abandoned.
Monday, August 2, 2010
Additional Tools you may enjoy
As I was surfing through some of my Diigo Bookmarks to contribute to Jennifer's Diigo group, I ran across this site that all of you may enjoy :)
http://www.go2web20.net/
http://www.go2web20.net/
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Week Five
Once again , there was interesting reading this week! It seemed to go very quickly, perhaps because of the tie in with teenagers - I have them and teach them. MOST of the time I really enjoy them :-)
I managed to spend much more time reading through the discussion board this week and am getting comfortable chiming in on others' postings. We are developing a sense of familiarity with one another at this point and ease of communication. There is a growing sense of humor on the board that has me looking forward to reading and responding to the posts. It seems many of us are just hitting our stride in this class and are already bemoaning the upcoming last week.
I am still working on developing a regular pace for online classes - I don't tend to be a regimented person, but think I may need to sit down with an e-calendar and schedule the events of the syllabus into it! :-( This class has gotten me into some pretty good habits, but it has also given me my fair share of moments of "Oh Gees!" I find myself getting off on tangents with some of the topics. This week was Bryan's podcast with Shirky. He specifically mentioned that he hadn't been active on Facebook in over a year - so I had to look him up. Lol. He is the E.F. Hutton of social media! I didn't read a fraction of what there is out there about him, yet spent nearly six hours reading interviews, articles and reviews of his new book. He is very well respected in the field and I suppose that shouldn't surprise me, since he authored the chosen textbook for the course. I think the surprise came from the fact that his book was such an easy read compared to most textbooks...
I managed to spend much more time reading through the discussion board this week and am getting comfortable chiming in on others' postings. We are developing a sense of familiarity with one another at this point and ease of communication. There is a growing sense of humor on the board that has me looking forward to reading and responding to the posts. It seems many of us are just hitting our stride in this class and are already bemoaning the upcoming last week.
I am still working on developing a regular pace for online classes - I don't tend to be a regimented person, but think I may need to sit down with an e-calendar and schedule the events of the syllabus into it! :-( This class has gotten me into some pretty good habits, but it has also given me my fair share of moments of "Oh Gees!" I find myself getting off on tangents with some of the topics. This week was Bryan's podcast with Shirky. He specifically mentioned that he hadn't been active on Facebook in over a year - so I had to look him up. Lol. He is the E.F. Hutton of social media! I didn't read a fraction of what there is out there about him, yet spent nearly six hours reading interviews, articles and reviews of his new book. He is very well respected in the field and I suppose that shouldn't surprise me, since he authored the chosen textbook for the course. I think the surprise came from the fact that his book was such an easy read compared to most textbooks...
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