Mr. Folden's Ed Tech Blog

Helvetica

2012-02-12T13:19:00.000-08:00

picture provided by Kristin Folden

As you may notice this entire blog post will be done in Helvetica font. My own little tip of the hat to the movie Helvetica. The movie "Helvetica" is a film about the creation and proliferation of the helvetica typeface. It is a documentary by Gary Hustwit . It covers the fifty odd some years that helvetica has been around and the uses and popularity of it.

In response to question #1 for our Visual Literacy review, I believe that the point of Gary Hustwit was to bring to the foreground something that most people overlook. The movie was an eighty minute love note to this font. Gary really drove home how perfect this font is and how much that it is used in our society. He was able to show that something as simple as a typeface can have it's own form of beauty. Helvetica's perfection is what makes it such a popular typeface. (The picture above is a pile of some, only some of the stuff in my apartment that has the helvetica font on it. It is kind of shocking.)

In response to questions 2-4, I do not believe that these questions apply to this movie. So on to question #5. This movie has made me see the written language that surronds me in an entirely new way. I see Helvetica everywhere. As I was watching the film I began to count the books in my study that have Helvetica on it. I saw a t-shirt that someone was wearing and recognized it for "grunge type" that talked about in the film. I can not help to not see typeface in a new light.

For #6, Helvetica is everywhere! Hustwit is able to drive us home through the scenes of everyday life that were interspersed throughout the film. Just seeing helvetica everywhere really was a good example of how ubiquitous it has become. At first I was annoyed by these little 2 minute segments of just helvetica in a natural environment. But after all the segments with people sharing their knowledge of the subject your appreciation for it really grows. Seeing how typefaces are made and seeing other designers and their work also adds to the visual appeal of helvetica.

Finally #7. To be honest I was bored for the majority of the film. That being said I can not claim that the film did not have an effect on me. It broadened my perspective on something that is so prevalent in society that most just ignore it. Symbolic language plays a huge part of a lives and now I can not see any of it and not wonder "Is that helvetica?"

Trip to Price Lab Schools

2012-02-11T16:14:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday of this week I had the opportunity, as a member of Dr. Z's Classroom Applications class, to visit Price Lab Schools in Cedar Falls. The point of this visit was to get some exposure to students who have a 1:1 computer ratio and to talk with a teacher who had done some work with project based learning. I was impressed for about half the time, the other half I was underwhelmed.

First the negative. We were able to observe a small class of high school students in a physics class. They were using there laptops to record data from an experiment that they were doing. This is where I was underwhelmed. I felt that the laptops at this point were overkill. The students could have accomplished the same think with graph paper and a calculator.

The positives. While I may have been underwhelmed with the type of work that the students were doing I did observe this. All but one of the students was actively engaged in the assignment. I did not see one single student doing something they were not supposed to. The students were all more than willing to help each other out, and it seemed that it was not that hard to fix mistakes in their work. I was also impressed in the following class where the students were tasked with making a small electric car, then record the car moving with the laptop, then import the footage into a program that would give velocity and other such measurements. Then the students were to present their results. This process was what got me excited about project based learning. Seeing what the students had done was quite impressive.

photo by [F]oxymoron via Flickr.com

AHA Post #2

2012-01-31T12:01:00.000-08:00

pic provided by wikimedia commons

This post is in response to two different class sessions of Visual Literacy. The first session being the one where we had our discussion over perception and experience, and last nights session where we did the exercises with the Gestalt Principles. Every single person is affected by their own perception of the world and that perception is affected by their life experiences. Our minds are thus trained to work in certain ways. We will add letters to sentences th_t are m_ssing some. Our mind will link _ _ _ _ dotted lines into one line. Experience just has a profound effect on perception.

Now what does this have to do with the image above. That is the lower case symbol of lamda. To most people they would just see a Greek letter. Now if someone had some of the same experiences that I had they would associate this visual symbol with something else, such as Half-Life series of video games. This is just the start of the perception of this symbol. In game, this symbol was used to represent a laboratory and eventually a resistance movement.

This got me to think about an elaborate troll that happened a few months back. A group of people created a website and put an image. This website has since gone dark, click here to see the actual page. This troll got this website shut down, but not before it lit up my corner of the nerd world with anticipation for a possible sequel in our beloved franchise. The image, click here for the image at a game news site, was of the Half-Life lambda symbol with a 3 included in the image. To us nerds, they could only mean that there would finally be a sequel to the latest game and provide us with a bit closure to the story. But it was not to be so, the creator of this franchise stated later that they were not working on the sequel making us all very sad.

But that was mostly just explaining my experience. It shows how a simple visual can have a profound impact on a group of people that can understand it through the lens of their own perception. If you go back and look at the symbol at the top of the article you can see that gestalt principles can apply. It is definitely makes use of negative space. And to me, whenever this symbol becomes official it will become a work art. Beautiful.

Collaborative Research Project

2012-01-31T09:14:00.000-08:00

This past week I had to complete a collaborative research project. At first I was little concerned about how this research project would go. Usually when a professor or teacher assigns a group project I get anxious. In the past it either turns into one person doing it all because they cannot stand to not be in control, one person doing it all because the others are to lazy to do it, or no one doing anything. This was not the case with Group Gelastic (name of our group for this project).

Group Gelastic was one of the more successful group projects I have ever been a part of. We all did a near equal share of the work. Tasks were assigned an completed without much difficulty. The work that we produced was very good. None of this would have been possible without the collaboration tools we had available to us. The use of google docs, Skype, and Jing made it easy for my group to communicate and get the job done. The picture above is what my screen looked like while I was working on this project, it has a video linked to it as well. In one session of collaboration, we had a three voice chat using Skype we were able to get most of this project done in 45 minutes. We were able to just focus in on our tasks and get it done.

This project really drove home that project based learning can work. With the amount of collaborative tools at our disposal, must of which are free, students will be able to more work of a higher quality than ever before. Now there is a technology requirement, but a cheap netbook or tablet can get the job done as well as any higher end laptop. The collaborative tools listed above are all found on the internet for free. Access to the internet and the resources on it are changing the way our world works. This simple project was the eyeopener for me. Before this simple project it was all just jargon and talk. Now I can actually see myself as an educator setting up collaboration projects, listing expectations and rules, telling students to set up consistent ways they are going to communicate to each other, and just watching them work and create at a distance from each other.

This was not my fist experience with a collaboration project. I was involved with the Flat Classroom Project last semester. The experience fell short for me. My mind and opinion still remained shut after the experience. I was an expert advisor that did not do much advising. I was basically just a lurker and did not really participate much. This project was a completely different experience. I was able to do work with my group and we were separated by about 40 odd miles geographically. But online we might as well have been sharing the same room. Collaboration does not just mean working together, it means working together in the same virtual space towards the same goals. It does not need to happen at the same time and can happen asynchronously.

How Visuals Impact My Life v1.0

2012-01-25T13:30:00.000-08:00

I am an intensely visual person. When I study for a test, I do not remember what is written in my notes or in a book, but how it looked in my notes or in the book. How the words were oriented on the page, left or right side of the page, top or bottom. I often have to think of that before I remember what is written. Because of this proclivity this blog post could become never ending. I have decided to use three visual that impact my life on a daily basis.

This is the first thing that I see in the morning, my alarm clock. Time is something that effects most of us. It makes us rush, it allows us to slow down and relax, it makes us aware of how little time we spent sleeping the night before due to noisy neighbors. But without a visual representation of time, the concept of time would be hard to grasp and almost meaningless.

This is another visual representation of what rules my life, or time in my life. This is picture of the calendar program that I use to keep track of all the course work that I need to do. Without this I would quickly fall behind and get lost in what I need to do. This may not be a visual symbol itself but there is one associated with this program that fills me with anxiety. On the dashboard of my Mac, the symbol for this program is a school desk. If an assignment needs to be done on that day that desk will have a floating red circle above it with a number inside for the amount tasks that need to be done that day. The worst it has ever gotten was a red circle with the number 8 in it. That day SUCKED!

Now when you see this image you may think of the quote "up side the head" but I am focusing on the ring. That ring is a visual and physical symbol that I am a married man (to the best wife ever!). I have this symbol on my person at all times. It is very reassuring to look down at my hand and to be reminded of what it means.

These were just three of the many visual symbols that are a part of my life. I am going to end with one observation. The written language is a series of symbols that have meaning to those that can interpret them. Without the symbols used throughout this post I would have been unable to convey my meaning as easily as just typing it out.

Intro Presentation Experience

2012-01-21T13:19:00.000-08:00

I was very impressed with the variety and quality of the intro presentations in Classroom Applications. This may have been the first time that I have actually enjoyed the usual get to know each portion that has become standard in most college courses. There seemed to be a lack of the awkwardness that can be associated with these presentations. The majority of them were entertaining, all of them showcased some form of creativity or another, and not one of them was boring.

When I was pondering what to write in this post I had a minor realization about why these presentations were so good. Dr. Z gave us free reign on what we were to do. Not only that he made it a project that was worth 0 points. I believe this took a lot of pressure off that is usually associated with creating presentations. When I was making it I thought "I can just have fun with this and not be punished or judged for it." I think this was a good way to get the class started.

Below I have included the video of me giving my presentation (this is what I submitted as my evaluation). There is a website but I have made it private.

AHA Moment #1

2012-01-20T06:35:00.000-08:00

During our first meeting of Visual Literacy we watched the short film "The Red Ballon." This is movie about a young boy in France during the 1950s. The boy finds a ballon on the way to school. The ballon eventually shows signs that it is a sentient being. I am not going to spoil how the movie ends, what makes this movie relevant to this class is what it does visually.

In "The Red Ballon" the young boy, the other children and adults, and the environment all lack a lot of color. The movie is not in black and white, but there is not a lot of color. The only thing that is a bright color is the red ballon. This just draws your eyes to the ballon so that the audience is forced to pay attention to something they would usually see as just a prop. After seeing this type of technique of using color I immediately thought of a commercial on TV. It is for a credit card, that shall remain nameless. Everything in the commercial is in black and white, while the only splash of color is this blue credit. Check out what I mean in the video below.

Seeing a visual technique still used sixty years later is kind of cool.

Expectations of Classroom Applications

2012-01-18T11:10:00.000-08:00

When I began this semester I had my usual discussion about my classes with my wife. In regards to this class I said "Classroom Applications is going to be the class that I will get the most out of. It is the class that makes this minor. A lot of what I will do in a classroom will be learned in this class." This sums up what I am expecting in this class.

I am going to keep this posting short. I have a few other hopes for this class. I want to learn as much as possible about what technology is capable of in the classroom. I also hope that the grading for this class is constant and prompt. Getting enough feedback from Dr. Z is also important. There were times last semester where I had no idea if what I was doing for Emerging Classroom Technologies was enough and appropriate for the class. I would have done more and better on the Flat Classroom Project if there had been grading during the project not just at the end.

Most of all I hope to have some fun.

My Zombie Tour

2011-12-08T08:43:00.000-08:00

For the last quest of our SecondLife we had to create a tour of the topic of our choice. I initially was thinking that I would try to find some educational places that I might someday may be used in a classroom setting. Then I decided to have a little more fun with it. I chose to go with a zombie theme. Surprisingly there are plenty of Zombie games on SecondLife. I had a lot of fun finding these games and going as far as my glitchy version of SecondLife. Most in this list below are games that involve shooting zombies with models provided by the place either for free or for a price. One is a replica of a popular video game franchise. Click on the name and you will be taken into SecondLife via a link.

Grimly

The Maze

Raccoon City

Zombie Attack

Camp Zombie

Urban Zombie

V Warriors

Walking Dead Combat Zone

Zombie City

Zombie Hunting World

pic from zombie.wikia.com

Tours?

2011-12-07T14:22:00.000-08:00

Quest five for our 3D Gamelab SecondLife adventure has us going on a series of tours. We are tasked with going to Dr. Z's house on Iowa Island, selecting a tour card and are sent off to various destinations. Initially when I started this I was very excited. I thought that I could possible create a tour someday that my students could use as an adequate learning tool. This may not be the case.

When I first landed in the first destination of the Ancient Civilization tool I see this amazing piece of sculpture/digital creation.

I saw this and thought this is amazing. Imagine what students can learn in such a 3d environment. I then started to look around. And as I looked around I become more and more disappointed with what I found. This tour had nothing to do with learning. All it had to do with having the people coming to the area and buying things from the vendors. Now I may have missed something somewhere, due to my SecondLife crashing every 5-10 minutes as usual. But I feel like this was an opportunity wasted by the creators of this location. I was hoping for informational billboards that would tell me about the Apollonians. The place was basically deserted with no one there to tell me anything either. I did see another impressive piece of work though.

My main problem is that I felt like the focus of the tour was in the wrong place. Making money is all well and good but I wanted to learn, as nerdy as that sounds. I went through the rest on the card and found more of the same. One teleport brought me back to the original destination with the last three destinations on the card not working at all. It was one gift shop, buy my sword shop, after another. This is one instance where the creators of this tour should take a tip from the professionals and have use exit through the giftshop, not land in the middle of it right from the beginning.

Avatar Modification and Woes

2011-11-30T18:24:00.000-08:00

Quest 4 is all about personal expression through the modification of your avatar. Avatars are very important in MMOs such as SecondLife. These digital dolls tend to be the self expression of the person controlling that avatar. Some are serious, some are silly, some are beyond description all of them take time to create and modify.

My first attempt at modification was not so successful. I chose a robot as my first avatar because I thought I would be kind of cool. This basic avatar does not have the ability to change much. All I really did was change it's size and distance of parts from each other. It ended up looking like this (see picture below).

Ok, experimentation complete. Now it is time to get serious about this avatar stuff. I went through the basic list of Avatars provided and chose the one with the shortest hair and glasses. I did not want to have to go and find an avatar that looked like me. So this is what I started with.

Now that I am looking at this, I think I wore an outfit similar to that to class today... Anyway I began to modify the size of my Avatar. I did this because I have noticed that all of the Avatars are what could be called attractive. I wanted to try and take away from this. So I made my Avatar small. I spent the next 40 minutes trying to get the facial features as close to mine as possible. By this time class was starting and I had to cut my modification short. I took the photo below, then SecondLife crashed and I lost my Avatar, I forgot to save. Sad. One thing I was disappointed with was the no bald option, I am bald and I want my Avatar to be bald.

Orientation

2011-11-30T18:04:00.000-08:00

The purpose of quest 3, courtesy of 3D GameLab, has you go to Lionheart Orientation Island to learn the basics of Second Life. While the basics are not overly complex for someone with experience navigating in digital space the orientation did have a surprising amount of depth.

A simple teleport takes you to the destination. At this point I would like to say that teleporting (or simply going to a webaddress) is far easier than some of the methods I used to employ while playing online games in the early 2000s. Just click and bam!, you are there.

Once at the orientation island you follow a series of arrows and are prompted to read billboards, move, interact with objects, and do some simple avatar modification. All of this was not new. Most of it had happened under the guidance of Dr. Z during our first visit to SecondLife. The information was well presented and I found most of it to be useful. I do believe that most of it applied to the old user interface and not the latest version.

Where I found the depth was in the description of the SecondLife economy. This is a first for me to see a game reference gamers making money without the parent company or even other legal bodies getting in the way. I suppose that buying the money is what is called a microtransaction and most companies involved in MMOs try to encourage these. What I was waiting for was a slide telling me that certain areas of the game are taxed by the real estate moguls of the area, or that the federal government is now taxing every in game dollar to try and make up budget deficits.

Over the quest is needed. With online games such as SecondLife there is always a large learning curve. I still have not mastered every part of the game but I do feel more confident about it.

Quest 2

2011-11-15T12:21:00.000-08:00

This quest was about navigating through the SecondLife environment. The movement controls are your standard wasd controls that most pc gaming nerds are familiar with. It was like riding a bike for me. The camera controls and the view object controls seemed a little counter intuitive to me. I kept want to move and rotate the view at the same time and had some issues. The one idea that I had for these snapshots and camera view points is that you can basically create any kind of visual content you want within this virtual world. You can walk people through a process using visual cues, kinda like showing people where to go on a tour...hmmm.

Impressions of Second Life :-s

2011-11-15T11:28:00.000-08:00

For Emerging Instructional Technologies, Dr. Z has tasked us with doing some quests via 3D Gamelab. This is part of our gaming in education content. This portion of the class is revolving around Second Life. To be honest I have never really been impressed with Second Life.

As a gamer I have been aware of Second Life for some time now and have not really had the desire to get involved. To me, if you want to sink time and money into a "game" it needs to be fun. So far what I have done with Second Life has been novel, not really what I am used to calling fun. I am hesitant to call Second Life a game because for me a game has to be fun. For the better part of my life, digital gaming has involved a certain degree of interactive mayhem, which Second Life seems to lack and avoid. To me it is just a large digital sandbox, that allows people to create their own content. I understand that I will get out of it what I put in, but it is just hard for me to get past my own personal bias that has kept me out of this game since I found out about 7 years ago.

On a more technical note, I have also stayed away from online MMOs that have massive amount of users because they tend to be a little buggy. If my avatar clips anything that just drives me nuts. While the graphics are not bad, they still could better. I also feel like there should be more streamlining in the motion of the avatars. The other boogeyman for me on MMOs is the other players. For me playing a game is a typically solo experience. I have had too many bad experiences of other players in online competition games just being jerks because they can. Hopefully this does not happen in Second Life and I can avoid the typical rage quit.

Pic from secondlife.com

What is a gamer to do?

2011-10-16T13:48:00.000-07:00

Hello, my name is Aric and I am a gamer. I play videos whenever I am able, as long as school work is done and other obligations are taken care of. When I found out that I have to play for an assignment I nearly wept with joy. But there were a few things that needed to be done to do this without feeling guilty that I was wasting time.

1. Read the RWLD. (This was the first one I read every single word and watched every single video.)

2. Select a game that is free and that I have not played before. (Harder than it sounds when you play for a hobby.)

3. Take care of other obligations. (chores, work, studies...)

Once this was all taken care of I dove into the game that I had chosen. I chose Warhammer Online. This is an MMORPG. I tend to avoid these games because of the monthly cost and their highly addictive qualities. This is one of the few areas of gaming where I have an interest but no real experience. I played until I got my character of choice up to a level 5. This took three hours.

During that three hours I was trying to see if what I was doing was fitting the characteristics of Flow. I noticed that I have a lot of self monitoring habits that keep me out of the flow. For instance I look at a clock about every ten minutes. I have to do this so I do not lose track of time, which is very easy for me. If I had not done that there was one other part of this game that kept from getting into the Flow, the learning curve of the game or in this case the learning CLIFF. It took me the better part of two hours to figure out how to properly play. At the end of that last hour of play, my eyes were burning from lack of blinking. Flow achieved.

Flow is a great concept. If video games can actually be made into a reliable teaching tool that actually does what is advertised I will use them in every way possible. One idea how to achieve that is to make it an MMO like Warhammer Online or Second Life. Students can master concepts and skills, gain experience, level up, get loot... I am just excited and want to play just typing about it.

Picture provided by Wikimedia Commons. That picture is of how video games were discovered. That is right, discovered not created.

The Flat Classroom

2011-10-10T18:17:00.000-07:00

The Flat Classroom is a wiki based student centered learning project that centers around the flatteners from Thomas Friedman. This is how the school of the future will look like. This classroom has people from all the US and the world participating and collaborating, with teachers and educators acting as facilitators.

The Flat classroom is the disruption, creating it's own new market or niche in the education world, that will eventually be the primary way to do things. In Disrupting Class by Clayton Christensen talks about how online classes will eventually take over about half of the class load for students in about 15 years. The Flat Classroom is a great example of a disruptive innovation addressing a need, as opposed to the students having nothing, and eventually just getting better until that it will rival the best teaching methods.

This disruptive technology/application is what I see as my job in the future. Educators may all end up working from home instead of working in a school building. As long as the students are learning and are being adequately prepared for a more competitive world, where I educate from does not matter.

The World is Flat

2011-10-10T17:53:00.000-07:00

I was first introduced the Flattened World concept, Thomas Friedman, when I was in the World Geography class at UNI. At this same university I have had exposure to Friedman again in relation to instructional technology. Hearing about Friedman once was interesting, twice is unsettling.

As an a future educator, one my numerous jobs will be to prepare my students for a job. Friedman would say that I need to prepare my students for a job and for a worldwide competition for that job. It will no longer be adequate to have good grades to get a job, students will have to be able to out create and innovate EVERYONE else in the competition.

The flattened world also has some implications for my future. If a student can learn from home with internet access cheaper than going to a school building listening to a teacher from India who has a PHD in the subject, what is the point of having physical school buildings or teachers. I may not have to commute to my school, but telecommute a school that would look more like Facebook than it does a school.

Ortelius World Map 1570 provided by Wikimedia Commons

Cloud in the Classroom

2011-09-24T18:05:00.000-07:00

"I forgot my homework." This one simple sentence is the source of a lot of stress for practicing teachers. How cool would it be if that excuse was no longer valid. Cloud computing may by the answer. (This would only really work in a 1:1 district or a very technology rich school.) Cloud computing according to Wikipedia is "is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility, (like the electricity grid) over a network (typically the Internet)." What this means is that ll you would need to be able to access every file, document, program, application is an internet capable device. What if desks were replaced by a tablet screen where the traditional desktop used to be, along with a good keyboard? Students could migrate from class to class always having their work with them and never worrying about not being able to run a program.

Pic Created by Sam Johnston. Accessed from Wikimedia Commons

Time Management

2011-09-24T17:44:00.000-07:00

After reading "Challenges Before Technology: Three Uphill Battles that Preservice Teachers Face" from Clay Edwards blog I realized that I am already having trouble with one of the "three battles". I am currently doing my Level 2 field experience through the College of Education at UNI. I have been losing the battle with Time all this week.

Part of the Level 2 experience is to create two lessons, with one of them involving technology. I took this as an opportunity to become more familiar with a technology that I had been introduced to before, Google docs. To be more precise Google forms. I chose to give a lesson over Feudalism and to then assess the students via a Google form. A little advice, do not use Google Forms without spending hours practicing before. I have the arrogance of technology native and thought that I would be able to figure out Google Forms in no time. Wrong! Not only was I learning a new form of technology I was learning how to make a lesson at the same time. This double whammy consumed my free time.

Then there is plan B. Plan B is what you prepare when your students just fly right through what you have prepared or what you use if your technology failed. My plan B for Google Forms was a Google Doc in outline form. Google really needs to work out an export to document function.

Appstore and lack of education

2011-09-24T16:21:00.000-07:00

In my last post I pointed out a few good tools provided by Google. Naturally I became curious to see what Apple had to offer. I own a Mac so I figured this would be an easy place to do a little investigating. I go to the Appstore, click on the education category and am immediately let down by what I see.

In these Appstore categories there is a banner running across the top of the section of the most popular apps of that category. For the education category this banner has; hang man, connect four, checker, a typing program, and a note program. Three of the five are strictly for entertainment only. I scroll farther down in the category and first on the list is a crossword app.

As a future educator I need to be fully aware of what types of programs my students are using. Just because they happened to be labeled as educational does not always mean that my students will anything other than "King Me!" Educators need to be sure to preview absolutely everything that their students spend any of their valuable learning time on. Failure to Connect by Jane M. Healy addresses this point over and over again. I highly recommend this book to anyone thing about incorporating technology into the classroom. The book may have dated information about technology but the core themes are still valid.

Translation Tools

2011-09-19T13:02:00.000-07:00

As an educator, having a student with English as a second language will be a common experience. Being able to communicate with your students is essential to teaching but can be very difficult if the student is only catching every other word. How do you address this translation issue? There are some great tools to help. Enter Google. Google has two great tools, and one mediocre tool.

The first good tool is Google Docs. Google Docs is basically a simple, free, online version of a productivity sweet. It has documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and forms. Google Docs also allows active collaboration, allowing anyone who has editing rights on the document to edit at the same time. The way to use this as a translation tool is easy. As a teacher you will print out more pages of instructions for activities than there are days in the year. Simply copy and paste your instructions into a new document. Then go up to tools. Click translate document. Then pick what ever language you need for your student. This allows for the student to comprehend what you are expecting of them out of the assignment.

The second good tool is Google Translate. This is also online and free. It will translate whatever you type in one box into what ever language you have selected in the other box. It even has text-to-speech capabilities. This means that you can speak into a mic and google will turn that speech into the text of your selected language. This an amazing tool that should not be ignored by educators. With this tool there is no such thing as the language barrier. It allows for real time communication for most languages.

The mediocre tool is the Google Translate app that can be downloaded onto your iphone/ipod/ipad. It is supposed to work on the same principle as the online Google translate and also free. The speech-to-text function is terrible. It will work at initial start up of the device, but after you close the app this will no longer work.

All of these tools require an active internet connection, broadband or 3g.

While these tools are spectacular they are not perfect and can actually hinder learning if they are overly relied upon. If the student becomes dependent on these tools to do all the translation for them, why would they be motivated to learn how to translate or even learn the language. When using them be sure to add in plenty of English practice to make sure the students are learning the language. These tools should be used more for instruction and to ensure that the students are producing good content.

Image from: google.com

Youtube as a teaching resource

2010-11-20T09:58:00.000-08:00

Some topics or subjects are just best taught through visuals. Youtube is an enormous source for teachers if they are just willing to look. The video, while quite funny, really demonstrates classical conditioning. I saw this video two years ago and I still remember what classical conditioning is. You can also use this to challenge students. What if one of your assignments were to have them present information in video form any way they wanted to? Allowing students to be creative is a great way of getting them to learn something without actually telling them that they are learning. Youtube is full of student films just like that. Not only do they provide a creative outlet but they also become resources for the rest of the world as well.

2010-11-19T09:21:00.000-08:00

1:1 computing at MNW

Manson Northwest Webster is the school district that I grew up in. I can remember when the elementary school got it’s first computer lab back in the early 90’s. All through my early education computers were something that you had to travel to. Now this small rural district has gone to 1:1 computing in grades 7-12. This is a giant step forward in teaching for the 21^st century. It is no longer enough to know how to type, to use the internet and email properly, and slap together a powerpoint project. Students need to be able to think of how to use computers in a more innovative way and the teachers need to help guide them to it. Hopefully the teachers are not just transplanting old lessons to a digital presentation and assessment, they should be presenting materials and assignment in ways that encourage the student to do as much learning as they can on their own. I am impressed MNW, I am very impressed.

Prezi

2010-11-18T12:07:00.000-08:00

Holy Crap! 3-D presentations! This is the first thing that came to mind when I checked out Prezi. As a future teacher I have become obsessed with one thing, how do I get my students engaged in the material. Let’s face it, slide shows are boring and have always been boring. Powerpoint is a just a digital way to bore your students, just like the vacation slideshows that some of us had to endure at a relative's house. Prezi allows you to create a presentation that is non-linear, as in the student can focus on any point of the presentation that they choose. Imagine this, putting your entire lecture series for a unit in one of these presentations, giving it to your students, then assessing them on the information in this presentation. They would have to be actively engaged in finding the information they need to correctly do the assessment. Holy Crap! Student engagement!

image used with permission from iclipart

High School Courses Can Be Done Online

2010-10-26T09:03:00.000-07:00

The Iowa Department of Education is offering High School courses online. I think that this is amazing, this allows kids who may not be able to attend High School regularly to still get the education they need. This also provides a good source for parents choosing to home school their children. This could even lead to an open enrolling completely online school district, with teachers and administrators working from where ever they may be, such as China or Canada. Let's just hope this does not phase out the High School teacher that teaches face to face in a more traditional setting.

Image from http://www.iowalearningonline.org/ used under fair use

First blog post

2010-10-06T13:15:00.000-07:00

I just created this place for me to demonstrate that I can seek out opportunities to grow professionally as a future teacher. Exciting! I am a teaching student at University of Northern Iowa.