It is hard to think of almost any aspect of my daily life without contemplating the technology that is involved. It starts with the wakeup from my iPhone, the several little red dots telling me about all the things I need to do for the day, places I need to be, and the games in which it is my turn. Next I am into my weather.com app so that I can figure out how my kids and I should dress for the day. Since the wife is already at work by this time our first communication of the day is always over the iphone as well.
Several text conversations occur between the wife and I between the time I get up and the time I get to work. From there it is time to log into my workplace provided ball and chain. I then stand in front of my computer for 8 hours evaluating student progress in various online courses, processing withdrawals, and answering chats from academic advisors who need me to look at one thing or another about a student file.
At lunch I either read a book on my Kindle app or watch a show streaming from Netflix on my phone.
Lunch is over and it's back to the cube for a little more one on one time with my desktop computer. The 5 o'clock whistle blows and I'm out the door and the conversations with my wife and kids over Facetime or the phone begin as we talk about how much we have missed one another and I get my list of things I must get a the store before coming home.
At the store my list is all on the iphone so I check the items off as they enter my cart and then check myself out (something that always takes twice as long as using an actual checkout person since the register always has an issue and the clerk always has to come fix it).
Back in the car and headed home I get to finally see my family and we spend some quality time together before the kids are off to bed and I am chaining myself to my own desktop at home as I work towards my goal of a graduate degree.
Before bed it's back tothe red circles with numbers in them just to make sure there are no tasks left undone and no crops left unharvested. Set the alarm and it's a solid 6 hours until it all happens again.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Social Networking Technologies & Education
Man, I feel like someone just set me up here. For anyone that has been reading my posts since the beginning of the class you will know where this is bound to end up, that's right, edmodo.com. Before I get to into that let me address at least one other social networking tool and the possible contributions it may add to the classroom.
I think that one technology that is being overlooked for classroom use is Twitter. Many associate it with mindless updates about mac & Cheese and how much kids hate their parents, but there is real value to be had in an application that kids are already so tied in to. Twitter can be used to facilitate classroom discussion by allowing students to que topics during a love classroom discussion, it can be used to allow students who may not usually raise their hands to participate using a media that is more comfortable to them, and even better, Twitter can be used to extend the conversation outside of the classroom. All of these concepts are very basic, but motivate students by allowing them to engage in class via a format they are passionate about. The biggest struggle here is in keeping students focused and on task while still teaching.
Of course Twitter was my sidebar so now it's on to bigger and more "edmodo-ier" things. If you visit the site edmodo.com you will be greeted with a Facebook like atmosphere specifically designed to enhance the classroom and extend the classroom into kid's every day lives. Here is a great example from Geek.com about a teacher who integrate edmodo into a field trip.
http://tinyurl.com/edmodotrip
This is just one great example of how edmodo can be integrated into the educational environment. Edmodo is also accessible via regular desktop or laptop computers and kids can interact with school notes, archived professor lectures, and form study groups in an environment that is safe and controlled.
I think that one technology that is being overlooked for classroom use is Twitter. Many associate it with mindless updates about mac & Cheese and how much kids hate their parents, but there is real value to be had in an application that kids are already so tied in to. Twitter can be used to facilitate classroom discussion by allowing students to que topics during a love classroom discussion, it can be used to allow students who may not usually raise their hands to participate using a media that is more comfortable to them, and even better, Twitter can be used to extend the conversation outside of the classroom. All of these concepts are very basic, but motivate students by allowing them to engage in class via a format they are passionate about. The biggest struggle here is in keeping students focused and on task while still teaching.
Of course Twitter was my sidebar so now it's on to bigger and more "edmodo-ier" things. If you visit the site edmodo.com you will be greeted with a Facebook like atmosphere specifically designed to enhance the classroom and extend the classroom into kid's every day lives. Here is a great example from Geek.com about a teacher who integrate edmodo into a field trip.
http://tinyurl.com/edmodotrip
This is just one great example of how edmodo can be integrated into the educational environment. Edmodo is also accessible via regular desktop or laptop computers and kids can interact with school notes, archived professor lectures, and form study groups in an environment that is safe and controlled.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Collaboration in online asynchronous & synchronous environments
Over the past several years I have mainly been an asynchronous being when it came to my online interactions. For classes I used email and discussion boards, for work I used email and "semi-synchronous" chats, and at home I was on Facebook and email. This past semester my eyes were really opened as part of the ID course I was taking required two synchronous class sessions and at least two synchronous group meetings during the course of our ID project.
I was pretty turned off at first, the idea of having to schedule out times in my busy days to meet with people I didn't know seemed like it may be a bit much for this introverted family guy. It didn't take long for that impression to change. We had our first class session on Illuminate and the professor was talking to us from a conference she was attending in Australia. She went over varying course requirements, allowed us to ask any questions we might have about the fairly intense course and to just introduce ourselves in person (so to speak). The second synchronous class session was much later, around week 6, and each group had to present work that they had collaborated on to the rest of the class. It was really interesting and added a new dynamic to my typical online course experience.
Throughout the course my group met several times on Skype and while the planned meetings were usually scheduled for an hour we would find ourselves mixing in personal conversations with our work an developing connections that I had not made in any other of my online courses. We mixed many of our Skype sessions with simultaneous Google Docs sessions as we collaborated on our project and as one of the new technologies we were experimenting with was edmodo we spent some time collaborating asynchronously on there as well.
Now that my ID course is over I do not find myself on Skype much any more, but I have still found many uses for newly discovered asynchronous technologies like Google Docs. Right now I am collaborating with my wife's cousin as we work through the ceremony for her wedding in late July.
I really found that while I was reluctant to use the synchronous communications technologies I truly came to enjoy and appreciate them. Skype and Illuminate allowed me to feel a connection to my instructor and to my classmates that I have never had before in an online course. In addition to the relationship building they also facilitated our group project in a far more expeditious manner than any experience I have previously had using discussion boards or email. While I don't have a lot of people to talk to using synchronous technologies I can assure you that when the need arises I will be the first to suggest their use.
I was pretty turned off at first, the idea of having to schedule out times in my busy days to meet with people I didn't know seemed like it may be a bit much for this introverted family guy. It didn't take long for that impression to change. We had our first class session on Illuminate and the professor was talking to us from a conference she was attending in Australia. She went over varying course requirements, allowed us to ask any questions we might have about the fairly intense course and to just introduce ourselves in person (so to speak). The second synchronous class session was much later, around week 6, and each group had to present work that they had collaborated on to the rest of the class. It was really interesting and added a new dynamic to my typical online course experience.
Throughout the course my group met several times on Skype and while the planned meetings were usually scheduled for an hour we would find ourselves mixing in personal conversations with our work an developing connections that I had not made in any other of my online courses. We mixed many of our Skype sessions with simultaneous Google Docs sessions as we collaborated on our project and as one of the new technologies we were experimenting with was edmodo we spent some time collaborating asynchronously on there as well.
Now that my ID course is over I do not find myself on Skype much any more, but I have still found many uses for newly discovered asynchronous technologies like Google Docs. Right now I am collaborating with my wife's cousin as we work through the ceremony for her wedding in late July.
I really found that while I was reluctant to use the synchronous communications technologies I truly came to enjoy and appreciate them. Skype and Illuminate allowed me to feel a connection to my instructor and to my classmates that I have never had before in an online course. In addition to the relationship building they also facilitated our group project in a far more expeditious manner than any experience I have previously had using discussion boards or email. While I don't have a lot of people to talk to using synchronous technologies I can assure you that when the need arises I will be the first to suggest their use.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Web-based resources
Amazingly enough I never really give much thought to the site I visit on a regular basis, they just sort of integrate into my life. For educational purposes I am a big fan of http://www.editlib.org , this is a site I typically enter through the Liberty research portal and they have a nice selection of up to date articles on all things Ed Tech. I am also an advocate of http://www.khanacademy.org/ , this is a great site for "learning just about anything". Finally I do use http://www.luonline.com/ more than any other website out there as this is my place of business and most of the information I need can be found there.
For my own personal use I visit my local newspaper at http://www2.newsadvance.com/ daily in order to find out what's going on around me locally. http://www.urbanfonts.com/free-fonts.htm is a great little site to visit for Photoshop fonts for all my amateur Photoshop projects. Of course I visit my FB page a few times a day.
For overall living my wife and I couldn't get by without http://allrecipes.com/ and http://www.weather.com/. I can't think of a day that we don't use those two.
For my own personal use I visit my local newspaper at http://www2.newsadvance.com/ daily in order to find out what's going on around me locally. http://www.urbanfonts.com/free-fonts.htm is a great little site to visit for Photoshop fonts for all my amateur Photoshop projects. Of course I visit my FB page a few times a day.
For overall living my wife and I couldn't get by without http://allrecipes.com/ and http://www.weather.com/. I can't think of a day that we don't use those two.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
presentations, what works for me
This week I was asked to think about my own learning style and what types of presentation work for me as a learner. Most assuredly I am a kinesthetic learner. I was always the kid that just dumped the toy onto the floor looked at the diagrams and had my thing together on Christmas morning while all my friends waited a week for their dads to assemble theirs. In the Marines I was a radio communications specialist and I learned far more form glancing at the basics then playing with new equipment than I ever got from a lecture or manual. In fact, when I am able to physically interact with the material I am also able to exercise the imagination effect as described by Sweller (2008). This only increases my understanding of the material as more information is internalized and stored in long term memory.
Sweller, J. (2008). Human Cognitive Architecture. In Driscoll, M. P., Merrill, M. D., Merrienboer, J. V., & Spector, J. M. (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Educational Communications and Technology [Kindle Version]. Retrieved from http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Educational-Communications-Technology-ebook/dp/B000SJZO90/ref=pd_rhf_p_t_1
Though Kinesthetic is my most prominent learning style I have always been able to learn through other means, which comes in handy in a world of lecture and rote memorization. A good presentation for me would allow a lot of interaction and opportunity for me to practice the concepts being taught. The biggest issue I see with most current presentation models is that they are simply professor-less lectures. While all the capability exists to construct multiple paths through the knowledge and to the learning objective these paths are rarely constructed or even acknowledged.
Reference
Sweller, J. (2008). Human Cognitive Architecture. In Driscoll, M. P., Merrill, M. D., Merrienboer, J. V., & Spector, J. M. (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Educational Communications and Technology [Kindle Version]. Retrieved from http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Educational-Communications-Technology-ebook/dp/B000SJZO90/ref=pd_rhf_p_t_1
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)