GOODBYE FOR NOW!!!

I have enjoyed all of my experinces in EDM310. I would not take any of them back because it is how I learn about new things that I like and things I don't like. I have learned a lot from taking this class and I have learned a lot from my classmates. I hope that I am able to see some of you again. I am sure that I will have some classes with some of you since over half of the class is Elementary Education majors with the excepition of a few. If I do run across some of you please don't be mad at me if I don't remember your names. I am horrible with remembering names but I never forget faces. Again I have enjoyed this class and I hope to see you again.

P.S. If any of you want to catch up with me later on my gmail is: Shaneise.taite@gmail.com

EDM 310 SUMMARY

EDM310 has a journey like no other. It has been full of blogs, presentations, podcast and many more FUN things. I walked into EDM310 with no clue about how to make a blog or to create a podcast. I have learned so many new things that I never knew about. Sometimes it amazes me how advanced our society has become. I think about just a few years back computers were not so popular. Not everyone had computers but now everyone has computers and there is even Internet access on phones.
There are so many things that I have learned in EDM310. Things that were covered in EDM310 were: blogs, wikis, presentations, Google Docs, YouTube, podcast, videocasts, Twitter, comments4kids, iTunes, iTunesU, Google forms, Google Earth, ACCESS, ALEX, Foliotek. As you can see EDM310 is a very busy class. I completely understand why all of these topics were covered. When we become teachers we will be teaching students who are familiar with all these different gadgets. Their learning style will be a lot different from ours and as teachers of the 21st century we will have to adapt to their style.
Some of the things that I will take into my class as a teacher will be things such as Blogs, Comments4Kids, Google Earth, Youtube, iTunesU presentations and Videocast.
Blogs: I didn't exactly love blogs when I began EDM310 but know I can understand how they can be helpful to me as a teacher. I could make a blog just for myself and the parents. I could leave updates about what the class is doing and things to come. I could talk to parents who have a busy lifestyle but are able to contact me while on the computer at work etc. All comments between me and the parents will be private and not on display for other parents to read.
Comments4Kids: The comments4kids page will be for the teacher, students, and parents. This page will give my class an opportunity to show off their work and projects that will be done in class and the parents could check out what fun projects their child is doing in class.
GoogleEarth: Google Earth was something very new to me. I had no idea that people could go on a tour anywhere in the world by just sitting at a computer desk. I think this would be an excellent way to teach geography. I would also love to take my students on a tour around the world to anyplace they would like. For older children I would assign them into groups and the group could pick a location and take the class on a trip. The possibilities are endless.
iTunes, Videopodcast, and YouTube iTunesU, videopodcast, and Youtube have some great educational videos to students to watch. Youtube can have some graphic material but I will monitor all activity done of computer during computer time.
Overall the possibilities are endless for students. There are so many different ways to learn and I believe that children should explore all there options including the Internet. When I become a teacher I will push for students to be able to use the Internet as a learning experience in the class.

Future Classroom Rules

When I was in elementary school the class rules were rules such as; raise your hand before speaking, leave your seat only when necessary, and keep your hands to yourself. For the children of the 21st century rules will be a little different according to Education Innovation.
Education Innovation predicts that the children of the 21st century will have rules that will be a lot different from what most people are use to. Some of the future classroom rules are: 1.Come to class on time, or log into your online class anytime day or night, whenever it is most convenient to you, 2. Bring required materials, including your laptop and cell phone every day, 3. Talk only when permitted, text at all other times.
Although these rules are a little outrageous some of the rules may be possible. I believe that in the future students will be able to bring their labtops to class. I believe that teachers should stay open-minded to new ideas because technology is making anything possible.

Seven Mistakes Teacher Make

Doug Johnson's post on Seven Stupid Mistakes with Technology was very entertaining. I enjoyed his post on "Seven Brilliant Things Teacher's Do "also but I enjoyed the mistakes better. Some of the things that teachers do were very shocking to me. One of the most disturbing things was that porn sites are watched more while people are a work. I would hate to know that my child's teacher was looking on a porn site while she was supposed to be teaching.
Another thing that was "stupid" was teacher's depending on filters to keep students from visiting harmful and inappropriate websites. I would definitely watch my students during computer town because some students may know how to turn off a blocker or find websites that the filter won't catch.
Overall I liked this post because instead of most websites that give good advice about teaching, it gave tips on what not to do as a teacher.

At The Teacher's Desk

The Teacher's Desk blogspot is a great website for teachers who would like to post their ideas and their opinions about teaching. I saw a couple of class blogs such as; Mr. McClungs class blog. A lot of teachers have posted things such as way to have more views for their class blogs or just their experience with different things in the school. One project that I liked was the "Fundred Project". This project was created to bring awareness to lead-contaminated soil in major U.S. cities by creating fake one hundred dollar bills in hopes that Congress would switch the fake money for real money. I don't know how well that plan would work but its a great idea.
One blog topic that caught my eye was the "Pencils and Crayons To Be Banned in Schools". This was completely ridiculous to me. How can students learn without using pencils or crayons? I just cant see students working out Math problems without pencils. The school saw pencils and crayons as a problem to the school because students were writing notes during class and poking each other with pencils. Pencils are not the problem the school is. There needs to be more discipline for the classes not taking away writing materials. If the students can't write notes during class then they will just talk to each other during class.

Michael Wesch

Michael Wesch's discussion on "The Machine Is Changing Us" hits on some very important topics. One of my least favorite topics discussed was the way the definition of the word "whatever" has changed through the generations. I felt like that was not very important to the discussion.
Many people may think that college is about having a good time and going to parties but its not that way for me. I have little time to spare, so I don't have a lot of time for social networks such as Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter. I have an account for all of these websites as a requirement for my EDM310 class but not a lot of time for them. However I check my Myspace account once a week. I wish I had more time to socialize with these different networks but unfortunately I don't.
When I teaching I don't plan on letting my students check their Myspace, Facebook, etc in my class, but I will let my students have an opportunity to have fun with technology by creating my class a blog for a website called Comments For Kids. I have participated in making comments on this website and I think it is a great way to let students have an opportunity to show the world their accomplishments.
Overall I agree with the comments Mr. Wesch makes on his video. Students are changing because there is so much going on in the 21st century. I believe that teachers will have to be one step ahead of the game to keep up with the children of the 21st century.

Why are student blogs important?

Before I took EDM310 at the university of South Alabama I had not blogged at all. I knew what a blog was but I did not have one. Now that I am a part of blogging I can see the importance of it. Blogging in a since is a great way to express your feelings. For example someone who has strong feelings about the war in Iraq can express their feelings on a blog and can even get responses from others who have opposing or like views. In another example an elementary class who is doing a county wide recycling project can set up a blog about their project and get others to participate. Below are more examples:

http://www.ps22chorus.blogspot.com/ This group of kids are really talented. I love the postive message that they are sending out. These kids are on the right path and their music instuctor is doing a great job with them. They have their own class blog and can even be found on youtube.

http://littlevoiceslittlescholars.blogspot.com/ This is a blog for students at Pt. England in Aukland, New Zealand. These students are from ages 5 to 6. Their class blog is a part of their literacy learning process. The children of Room 5 write stories and then draw pictures to match there stories. They are displayed on their blog for views to see and comment on.

http://kpetv.blogspot.com/ The students of Pt. England have a blog that has a lot of their projects posted and they also have podcasts on iTunes.

Google Forms

Dear Kaia

This week in my EDM310 class we are learning about a project called Comments 4 Kids. This new project allows people and even students to visit other peoples websites or blogs all around the world. You can make a comment about what you found intersting on their page or leave a statement about your views on a pacific topic.
For my blog this week I researched about Mr. Chmberlins class. His class is apart of the project comments 4 Kids. The class was assigned to visit the page of a young girl named Kaia. As the class was doing so her father, Jabiz, saw what they were doing. He responded back and asked the class could they make Kaia a video because Kaia was too young to read and the class did.
I love the fact that technology is getting so advance to the point where it is allowed in schools now to do projects. I believe that in the future schools will have computer classes for students starting with 1st grade. Kaia's father made a statement that parents can be a little nervous about there children being introuduced to the internet at such an early age because of all the negative things on the internet. But if children learn at an early age what they are not allowed to do on the internet the postive will outway the negative.

Challenges of Participatary Culture

After watching the new media literacies I found an interesting topic within that web page. The name of the site was "Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture". This web pages was about building the field of digital media and learning. As I began to look around the page the topic that stood out to me most was "Why We Should Teach Media Literacy: Three Core Problems".
The three core problems with teaching media literacy were: the participation gap, the transparency problem, and ethnic challenges. The participation gap is the unequal access to opportunities, experiences, skills, and knowledge that will prepare youth for full participation in the world of tomorrows. The transparency problems are challenges youth face in learning the see clearly the ways the media shape perceptions of the world. Ethnic challenges are the breakdown of traditional forms of professional training and socialization that might prepare young people for their increasingly public roles as media makers and community participants.
It is important to get past these problems so that every child has the opportunity to learn about the new media literacies

New Media Literacies

The New Media Literacies is a set of skills that are predicted to be used in order to understand and to use the Internet in today's society. The Internet has become very popular and is becoming very advanced. A lot of today's job's rely on the Internet so it is very important that people know how to use the Internet effectively.
Some of the new media skills that people need to posses are:
judgment-an example would be that you find something on the Internet and decide whether it is reliably or not
negotiation-knowing how to enter into different groups
appropriation-how to remix or change information in a meaningful way
play- experiment with your surroundings for problem solving
trans media navigation, simulation, collective intelligence, performance, distributed cognition, visualization, and multitasking.
I think all these skills are very important keys to understanding media literacies because they are the 21st century skills that we need to effective artists, citizens, and workers. I do not posses all of these skills but I hope that one day I will.

This Is How We Dream

Richard Miller works in the English Department at Rutgers University. He has a podcast out about technology. The name of this podcast is "This Is How We Dream". In his podcast Richard is discussing about the advances of technology over the years and what is to come in the future. It is easy to see that technology is not the same as it was 20 years ago. There are new things that are happening everyday with technology.
Richard explains in his podcast just how advanced technology is going to become. He predicts that paper and pencil will not be needed because society will soon begin to rely on the Internet for just about everything. There will be many websites available for looking up information and different types of programs.
One of the hold backs that Richard predicts is that there will not be enough teachers who are able to teach new media composing. This is just one of the the many problems that will occur before this programs actually takes place. This video is available on YouTube. When Richard first put this video on YouTube, in a 3 month
period he received 9,000 visitors. People are very interested about what is to come so there should be no problem in making this program a success.

First Time iPod User

Technology has advanced so much since our parents were born and is still advancing today. Things that we are now learning may change by next year or even by next month. It is hard to keep up with all the new gadgets that have came out so no one should be embarrassed if they don't have the knowledge of using an ipod. Using an iPod for the first time can be frustrating if you have no clue how to use it.
There are some people who may be too embarrassed to ask for help with using an ipod but now they don't have to because they can go to the Internet for help. When I began to look for websites that would have the most helpful information about using an iPod there was tons of information. But I finally found a website that was very easy to understand and had step by step instructions and also included repair instruction videos and a video on how to replace the battery. The name of this website is: http://hubpages.com/hub/ipod_instructions.

iTunesUniversity

iTunes University is something that is new to me. My class has just completed our audio podcast and it was my first time having tryed this. I guess podcast are becoming very popular because for my EDM310 I read about something new teachers are coming up with. Teachers are deciding to have their class lectures turned into podcast. Many teachers and students have found this new way of teaching very effective.
There was an experiment done and teachers found that students who listened to the class lecture by podcast instead of listening in class, performed better on a test. Students who listened by podcast had the opportunity to listen to the lecture repeatedly. So if there was anything that a student was puzzled about they could easily rewind and replay the lecture.
The problem I have with podcast lectures is that there is no opportunity to ask questions if there is confusion about something that is said. The last problem is what if a student is not able to get to a computer to listen to the podcast. Many teachers are not as forgivable as others.

Alice Christie

This week in my EDM310 class our assignment was to read about a website created by Dr. Alice Christie. Alice Christie created a website to share her forty year experience as an educator. She has many helpful tips about comprehensive resources for educators who want to use technology in the classroom. She also includes her interest and commitment to being a lifetime learner. A lot of the information she is giving can be very helpful.
When I begin to explore through the website I saw many interesting things but the one that caught my eye was "Searching the Web". This particular title would be the most helpful for me because researching items on the internet can be a little tricky. Their are some websites that are not reliable and then there are others that just doesn't give the correct information I am looking for. When I began to search through this page I found website directories that would be useful to children and for teachers. Overall this website gave some great tips for searching through the web.

Mr.Mcclung's Experience As A First Year Teacher

Mr. McClung had just become a first year Elementary teacher and made some discoveries about what it takes to be successful and decided to make a post about some helpful tips that may be useful. Some of the tips I thought would be very helpful to me as a first year teacher were: communicate with your students, listen to your students, and never stop learning. All these tips are tips that I think will be very helpful to me.

Wikipedia Scanner

This week my EDM310 classmates and I were assigned to read a post by Virgil Griffith. His post was about a invention that he came up with that would help track down anonymous edits people make to Wikipedia entries. This invention was called the Wikipedia Scanner. The scanner tracks down the most interesting edits more quickly than others and tracks them down to the source.
What surprised me was that a lot of companies,like Exxon, would edit information they thought was unflattering about their company. I thought the BeaverScope would be the most useful because the program will track the editor to their location, the time of the edit, the user name, and what they edited. I'm sure this would be very embarrassing to the company and the editor.

Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

This week in my EDM310 class our assignment was to watch a video by Randy Pausch. The name of the video was Achieving Your Childhood Dreams. For the last past two weeks the class was assigned to watch podcast's about technology, so I was excited to watch something that was a little different. The video was very intersting. This video was about how people can achieve there childhood dreams.
When the video first came on, the man(Randy Pausch) introduced himself. After he introduced himself, he told the audience some very heartbreaking information. Pausch told the audience that he had about 10 tumors that were in his head. Just one tumor can be dangerous by itself but to have 10 is very tragic. The doctors told Pausch that he had 3 to 6 months to live. He assured everyone that he was very healthy and that he was not in denial about his condition.
Pausch's powerpoint were very basic but helpful. He started his powerpoint by introducing his main topics that he was going to be discussing. His topics were: childhoods dreams, enabling dreams of others and lessons learned: how to achieve your dreams. Of the three categories, childhood dreams was the most interesting topic for me.
As a child Pausch made a list of thing that he wanted to do or achieve. The first thing on his list was being in zero gravity. I personally thought that this was a weird achievement for a small child be he got to achieve this goal. His second thing was playing football for the NFL. Pausch never played for the NFL but he coach a football team. He said that coaching football taught him fundamentals and hard work. The third thing on his list was being an author in the world book encylopedia, which again I thought was akward for a child but he accomplished it as well. Pausch also wanted to be like his boyhood idol,Captain Kirk. Pausch never was like Captain Kirk but he did get a chance to meet him. He also wanted to win huge stuffed animals. Pausch won numerous stuffed animals and he displayed them on his show. The last achievment was being an Imagineer at Disney World. Pausch worked as an Imagineer at Disney World and worked on the Aladdin Project. He was offered a job but turned it down.
I thought it was amazing that he was able to accomplish goals that he had when he was a child. This video pushed me to achieve my goals no matter how silly or hard they may seem because it is possible.

Is it okay to be a Technologically Illerate teacher?

The name of the podcast was Karl Fisch: Is it Okay To Be A Technologically Illiterate Teacher. My answer to the question is no I don't think that it is okay to be a technologically illiterate teacher. I think that all teachers should have some kind of experience with computers and computer programs. A lot of students now are growing up with technology and learn how to use technology at an early age.
I agree with a lot of the comments that people left on this website. I think a great way to get students to learn new things with education is that the teacher should use a method that students enjoy. Many children today have ipods and all top of new inventions. A teacher should be able to incorporate technology with education.

It's Not About the Technology

The video by Kelly Hines was about technology. The name of the video was Its Not About the Technology. This post had some good information about improving teaching by using technology. Some of the information about technology that was on the post was teachers should be lifelong learners. I agree with this. I believe that teachers should learn for their students.
I believe that technology is useless with teaching. Technology is changing fast and it may be harder for older teachers to keep up with the technology. I think that if technology is going to be a big part of education, then the school should offer some type of workshop about computer technology to keep teachers up with whats new and changes with technology.

A Vision of Students Today

The movie by Michael Wesch was very interesting. The name of the video was A Vision of Students today. When I first watched this video I was expecting some kind of video sound but it was not. The video consisted of students writing or typing interesting facts on pieces of paper of on a laptop. Some information was also written on the back of chairs.
Some of the information that students wrote I could relate to. I agree with the student who said that all teh money they spent on books, half of it would be useless. I will also have loans to pay off when I finish school. I can not think of any other helpful information for this site. I enjoyed this site and it has some intersting facts.

My Presentation

Podcast Collection

The resource information that I chose was the Podcast Collection by Judy Scharf. This website was very helpful to me. The information that Judy gave was helpful because she broke down what a podcast was and how to go about creating one. When I started watching my first podcast I really didn't understand the purpose but Judy made things a lot clearer for me.
Judy broke down the facts about podcasting and she also put helpful links in her discussions. I like that she put creative topics that people can use for podcasting. I thought that the podcast topics were interesting topics that I might discuss. The tips to succeed would be helpful for me when I begin to do my first podcast. I will definitely go back to this website if I need some information about podcsting.

Picture Modifiers

About Podcast!!!

Well, What can I say about my first Podcast experience, one word, DIFFERENT. This was my first time listening to a podcast and it was really hard for me to get into the conversations that were going on with the podcast. To me there was a lot of unnecessary information that was given out. I think that the speakers should just give the information needed and not just carry on about there life history.

The first podcast that I listened to was Smartboard Lessons. It was a little "wordy" but it gave some helpful information. This podcast gave teachers or other instructors great ideas on how to be creative with a smartboard. It also gave out helpful techniques.

The second podcast that I listened to was Kidcast. It was designed to help people learn about starting their own podcast and informed people about new podcast that may interest them. I listened to Episode 21 which was about controlling the noise in a classroom while students are trying to create a podcast. One tip that I thought was helpful was that, while students are trying to create a podcast the teacher should come up with a "magic" word like, voice over, to inform the students that other students are about to do their podcast and that the room should get quiet. I thought this was a helpful tip.

The third podcast was This Week In Photography with Alex Lindsay and Frederick van Johnson. This podcast gave their audience information about camera technology. The information they gave was about taking great photos and understanding how a camera works. The men in this podcast gave out too much information about their personal lives. As I read the comments that viewers had left, a lot of the people left negative feedback. Most people had the same views as me on this podcast, "Too Much Information".

The remaining three podcast were not very interesting to me. It was really hard for me to take any helpful information from these remaining podcast: Connect Learning, EdTechtalk, and MacBreak Weekly. I could not understand the woman on the EdTechtalk very clearly. Podcast are not one of my favorite things to listen to but maybe I will come across a podcast with an interesting topic that will change my views.

My First Picture

Digital Learning

Vicki Davis is a teacher in rural South Georgia. She is a IT Director and a full-time teacher. She teaches at Westwood School. Davis believes that students should learn about different things and new technology in a different way besides using just pen and paper to take notes. She encourages her student to use every type of technology they have. She observes them and looks for their strengths and interest. With this technique she is able to find ways to help students learn and process information better.
DigiTeen is a program the Davis uses with her students. Through this program her students are able to communicate with children all around the world. The students collaborate on different projects and talk about the different trends. While communicating with other students they are also learning different skills and learning more about technology.
In closing I believe Vicki Davis approach to learning is very affective. Students are enjoying what they are doing and they are learning different computer skills while having fun. Because students are having fun while learning they are more comfortable with technology and I believe that learning should be fun.

Creative Minds

Ken Robinson has a session about the importance of creativity in the school system. His definition of creativity is "the process of having original ideas that have value that comes through with the interaction of different new ways of seeing things. He has a very big interest with education because he believes it will take us into a future that we do not understand. He also believes that creativity is just as important as literacy in the school system and that we should treat it as such.
After listening to his session I believe that creativity is important in the school system. I like the example that he gave about the choreographer who produced Cats and Phantom of the Opera. He said that when she was a young girl in school her teachers would tell her mother that they thought that something was wrong with her because she would always move around in class and not do her work. The teachers told her mother to take her to see a doctor. When her mother and the doctor left her alone to talk, the girl began to dance to some music that was playing. The doctor then discovered that the little girl was a dancer, so her mother took her to a dance school. The little girl grew up to be a creative chreographer who has produced many successful plays because she was able to keep her creative spirt going.
Most children at a certain age are not of afraid of being wrong but as they grow older society leads them to believe that being wrong is a bad thing. With children being afraid of being wrong, it leaves them little room for creativity. I believe that children should be incouraged to use their creativity in every way possible.

Did You Know?

Did you know? 3.0 is a video that is on youtube that has some very interesting facts about topics that most people rarely think about. It was last updated in 2008 so it has a lot of current information and it also has information from the past. It compares a lot of things from the past that has changed currently like "the number of internet devices in 1984 was 1,000 and in 2008 the number of devices was 1,000,000,000. This is huge difference. This information really opened my eyes about how dependent on technology our country has got.
Some information that was not as shocking as others were things such as "if myspace was a country it would be the 5th largest in the world (between Indonesia and Brazil). This information was not a surprise because majority of the people I know have a myspace account. The other information that was not a surprise was "there are 31 billion searches on google every month and in 2006 this number was 2.7 billion". Google is a very popular website. I use google for just about anything that I want to look up because it is a reliable source for me.
Overall the video was a great source for anyone who likes to know new information about how the world is changing through tecnology.

Who Is Shaneise Taite

Hello Everyone. My name is Shaneise Taite. I am from Monroeville, Alabama ( a very small town). I attended Alabama Southern Community where I received an associates degree in science and here I am today at South Alabama. My first major was Radiology but then I changed it to Elementary Education. I plan to receive my masters in Counseling. I have a daughter named A'Laya Nicole Young which is my pride and joy. I am looking forward to learning new thing in this class and to expand my knowledge about technology.