The Sky's the Limit?

The final assignment for CEP 416 is to create a Technology Integration Plan that you plan on actually using in your upcoming internship year. The assignment's boundaries and specifications are easy...they don't exist. At first this sounds like a great opportunity to use your knowledge and your imagination for create your ideal plan. A plan that will allow your students to be engaged and excited. A plan that has no limits of funding, state benchmarks, parental involvement or district allowance. My mind was in constant brainstorming mode for several days. I wanted to make sure that I had spent enough time creating every possible technology integration idea before I settled on my project of choice.

When I felt that I had given enough time to the brainstorming stage I decided to actually sit down and start writing the details, steps and concepts that would be a part of my brilliant plan. And this my friends, is when I realized that this was no easy task. I realized that I have hardly ever been given the opportunity to create and development my own ideas for my classroom. My classes have always included projects and papers with these requirements and those specifications. I couldn't get over the fact that here I was with no boundaries and I sat craving the restrictions that I have grown so used to. I spoke with one of my fellow CEP416 classmates about my dilemma and her eyes light up as I explained my frustration with the need for restrictions. Her response made the project seem easy, "Anything is possible, if it doesn't exist - create it." I explained my worries of funding and permissions that would hold up my plan and all she could do was talk about how there are no limits to what I could do and that I should create and work towards establishing my dream project. I left the conversation still feeling frustrated, partially because of my need to know the real life restrictions that I would have to work around next year and also because of my envy for her excitement and imagination.

I wondered why I couldn't take this opportunity to be the typical excited-motivated-free-spirit-college graduate that I would soon be. I began to realize that I lack that stereotypical "I'm going to change the world" attitude. The thought saddens me and I wonder where my excitement for my future profession went. I try my best not to point fingers but I can't help but feel that my lack of excitement comes from my classes and my lack of real-elementary classroom experience. Yes, I've had several placements and TE courses but none that provided me with a positive and excited attitude. These experiences have left me jaded and unmotivated. I have not been filled with the notion that I can make a difference and change the world one student at a time. I have come accustomed to thinking about the rules, regulations, limitations and challenges that come with teaching. When I think about the road ahead of me I imagine a difficult, bumpy and long road where the moments that make teaching worth it are far and between. And here less than a month away from completing my undergraduate degree and less than six months away from being in a classroom five days a week - I sit and wonder where did this cynic come from and when will she go away?

CEP 419 Synthesis Paper

Here is a link to my Synthesis Paper for CEP 416. I compare and contrast Google Page Creator and Blogger, as well as email and text messaging.

A Practice Slide Show

Conference Information for Free

Information Strategies - Material from MACUL

I had briefly heard about the MACUL conference through various faculty among the TE department and I had figured that it did not relate to me. This is a mistake that I've made for the past four years, always tuning out when I hear anything about "professional development" or "conference". I had always assumed that those types of things were for people with real jobs, never thinking that an undergrad could benefit just as much. Once I began to realize that these events do related to me specifically as a pre-professional, I automatically looked into the provided information. After looking at the details of the events I came to realize that the high registration cost would probably not allow me to attend very many of these events. Fortunately this week I learned the great amount of information, material and resources that are still available for the vast amounts of people who did not attend the conference. I was amazed at the range of hand-outs, presentations and resources guides that are available for free. I feel that I have greatly gained from investigating all of the free material. I believe that this assignment has taught me about greatly resources that I will continue to use throughout my professional career.

• The first site that I came across that I thought would be valuable was a particular page from Anette Lamb's website http://eduscapes.com/. I was amazed at the vast amount of free resources that are provided on this page.

• The second site that I enjoyed was link to MACUL's winter 2006-2007 journal. I found this journal to be very interesting. I was particularly interested in an article by Kelly Kermode about Blogging in the Classroom. I would love to create a classroom that uses blogs in their general education, but I sometimes get overwhelmed with the actual details of creating such as assignment. I enjoyed reading an actual teacher's ideas about blogging. I also found this article interesting because it provided resources for blogs that could be restricted and filtered. One of my worries with having students blog would be any inappropriate behavior. Kermode provides resources to help with this problem

• This third interesting site that I found was http://www.geocities.com/phyl_barto/Excel/Excel_lent_Integration.htm. I thought this website was interesting because it incorporates ways to use simple programs like Excel in the classroom. It also provides a wide range of ideas and examples for the classroom.

All Things Google

*I tried to post my Google Document of this entry, but for some reason it said that my Blog preferences wouldn't allow it. So I just copied and pasted the entry.

Google Documents, Notebook and Calendar are several of the new and very useful tools that I have been shown through CEP 416. These tools are not only useful for my own personal daily life, but they will also become extremely useful in my future classroom.

• Google Calendar will have a very clear position in my future classroom. I will create a class calendar that contains assignment due dates and reminders for students. I will teach students (and parents) how to view this calendar as a way of remembering the various activities and projects that are a part of our class. Students will be able to check this calendar whenever they are confused about an assignment. Another important aspect of the calendar is that parents can look at it and not have to ask myself or their child about assignments. Besides the academic use of the calendar I would also like to post (perhaps on a separate calendar) extra-curricular activities that are happening at the school or in the community for students to participate in. I believe that maintaining an up-to date calendar is the best way to stay organized and on time. I plan on encouraging students to develop their ability of keeping a calendar up-to-date.

• Google Notebook will also be an encouraged tool for students to use in order to stay organized. Researching on the web can often be a bit overwhelming and I hope by the time I am teaching I have collecting enough useful tools for my students so that they will feel confident surfing the web for information. I often find myself losing particular websites or quotes online that I would like to use in papers or projects and I typically get a bit frustrated. I think Google Notebook will provide students with a way of storing useful information while they are researching. I think the important aspect of Notebook is that the user doesn't have to stop their searching in order to file or take-note-of important information, they can simply copy and past the information into Notebook. Their entry will then have the desired information and the source waiting for them to use after they have finished researching. If students are working on research papers I could also see Notebook be useful in the regards that I would ask for students to print off their Notebook entries and turn them in with the paper. These entries will help with connecting the written information with the source of the information. As the grader of these potential research papers I think it is important for students to develop their skills in citing their sources correctly and Notebook would help me to understand where they got their information.
• Google Documents will be another useful tool, especially when writing essays or research papers. Students will not have to worry about where to save their works-in-progress. They can simply store their papers in Google Documents. This tool could also be very helpful for teachers because students could include teachers as viewers or collaborators on their individual documents, allowing for the teachers to monitor their progress or edit while the student is between steps. Google Documents would provide students will clear ways and places of saving work that is in progress. Students would also be able to have their peers edit their papers online using the revisions tool. I can see this tool be very useful in every aspect of paper-writing.
  

Social Bookmarking

I chose to explore the social bookmarking website BuddyMarks because when I initially read through the various choices I discovered that this one is supposedly filtered for inappropriate material. I thought that exploring a filtered site would be the most beneficial because I could see myself using this in a classroom. I found many similarities between Del.icio.us and BuddyMarks. The following are similarities that I felt were important:

• both allow users to store their bookmarks in one specific area
• users can share their list of bookmarks with other users
• users can share their bookmarks with non-users
• bookmarks can be tagged and organized into categories
• users can give each bookmark a personalize title and description
• bookmark lists can have an RSS feed so that viewers are alerted when the user adds or modifies the list
• users can update and delete bookmarks
• users can create a button for their browser toolbar that allows them to bookmark any site into their Buddymarks lists
• users can search for topics or tags
• users can view a list generated by the website of random or recent bookmarks tagged by other users

Despite the similarities I found that these sites varied in appearance and opportunities for the users. BuddyMarks seems to be a more "user friendly" site, while Del.icio.us may be more beneficial for the user who wants a multitude of preferences, settings and options. I believe the Del.icio.us user would be more tech-savy and have developing ideas of different ways to use the site. I think BuddyMarks would be great for the average websurfer. It's appearance is clean, neat and clear. The pages for BuddyMarks are pretty simple to view and navigate. Users are limited, compared to Del.icio.us users on their options for changing or modifying their list. Del.icio.us provides modifying options for the users that may make more sense to the avid web surfer. This type of user would be more familiar with the available options and would be successful in finding those options. BuddyMarks users would probably be the web surfer who uses the internet for very specific and clear objectives.

Keeping these similarities and difference in mind, I begin to think of how social bookmarking could make it's way into my future as an educator. I believe that this tool can be used in my professional and teaching development. I have already started using Del.icio.us instead of bookmarking anything on my laptop or desktop. The online list of bookmarks has already come in handy when I'm away from work or home and I need to show someone a site with information that pertains to our area of interest. I no longer worry that I will lose a important website if/when my computer crashes because I know all I have to do is pull up my Del.icio.us account and all of my links are saved there. Del.icio.us will also help me to stay organized by creating tags and bundles, this way I can categorize my bookmarks. I have already began to keep bundles of teaching resources, educational articles and kid sites. I have also begun to think about the possibility of my students using social bookmarking in our classroom. I have read various articles about ideas for implementing sites like Del.icio.us in classrooms and I'm excited to discover how they may fit into my room. I know that our usage of these tools will be completely decided by the grade level that I am teaching, so any type of implementation of social bookmarking would have to be established after figuring out what the students are capable of doing on the internet. I do not think I would feel comfortable trying to get some of the younger grades into social bookmarking because so much time would be wasted teaching and monitoring their use that our computer time would run out. Older elementary and middle school students could definitely use a tool like social bookmarking. After exploring Del.icio.us and BuddyMarks, I would chose to use Buddymarks in my classroom. I think that the site would be easy to understand for the students and I would not have to spend as much time teaching how to use the tool and monitoring their usage. I would love to have student creating their own Buddymark account and list of bookmarks. This would be an excellent way for students to keep track of their resources for papers, projects or exams. This tool would also allow for students to share their resources with each other. I believe everyone should know how to pull their resources from their surrounding environment. This tool would help students to use each other as sources of information. Students could tag sites that they used on projects or papers. They could also tag sites that connect to class discussions or areas of study. I am also hoping that I could have the students enable the RSS feed option on BuddyMarks so that their fellow students and myself would be notified when they updated their bookmarks. I know that I will continue to develop ideas for using social bookmarking in my class throughout my personal use and experience with this type of tool. I hope to one day pass that knowledge to my students.

Resources from Technology Conference

We are in the process of posting handouts, PowerPoint presentations, websites and notes from the different lectures and sessions from the Technology Conference. I know I plan on using quite a bit of the resources that were discussed at the Conference, so I figured that some of you may benefit too!

2007 Technology Conference Resources