Reading Reflection Week 4

                I thought of social bookmarking to be a lot like Pinterest.  However, I found social bookmarking to be more useful.  It is very user friendly and very easy to use.  I also felt it organized everything better and full websites could be bookmarked, as oppose to a single page, picture, etc.  It also was nice to be able to save websites under more than one topic.

                I think social bookmarking holds great value for teachers and students alike.  As far as teachers go, we can tag websites with articles, lesson plans, activities, etc. and these websites can be shared with fellow teachers.  Teachers could also share articles with parents and administrators.  Sometimes parents will ask questions about why we do the things we do or they will wonder how they can help their child (maybe with homework).  A teacher can use social bookmarking to share these articles and ideas with parents.  The same goes for administrators.  Sometimes an administrator will ask us why we do a certain lesson or why we chose to teach a certain lesson the way we did.  By using social bookmarking, teachers can tag articles related to their teaching and administrators will be able to read those articles.

                As a Kindergarten teacher, those are the uses for social bookmarking that I see in my classroom.  However, I could definitely see social bookmarking as being beneficial to teachers in upper elementary and higher.  One could have students use social bookmarking when doing research.  By tagging websites when doing research, they can share those with fellow students.  This would be especially helpful when doing a group project.  Social bookmarking would also be great for online courses, such as this class.  Students can tag websites that have to do with each topic and can share them with their classmates.  This is especially helpful in an online course when students very rarely get to speak or see each other face-to-face.

                In the Trends and Issues reading, I felt the definition that I most related to or agreed with was the 2008 AECT definition. I have always felt that educational technology is a form of teaching that uses different resources (technology) to enhance lessons and to help assist teachers.  The idea of the 2008 AECT definition that really stuck out to me (that I had never really thought about before) was “ethical practice”.  I have never thought about the idea of educational technology being an ethical practice.  After reading this chapter, however, it really makes sense.  With all of the technology that is out there, it is easy to plagiarize an idea.  Also, with the internet being in classrooms now, it is more important than ever to maintain high ethical conduct.  I felt the definition the book gave was quite complex.  I like definitions to be short, sweet, and to the point.  I felt that the book definition was encompassing all of the ideas from all of the definitions in the chapter.  It seemed to only confuse me more.

                After reading this chapter, I am definitely looking forward to learning more about the field of educational technology.

Delicious Page

http://delicious.com/eaeckley

Reading Reflection Week 3

I have to admit, when I first read the assignment this week, I was intimidated. I have never used or even knew what a wiki was. After reading the articles and watching the videos, however, the task seemed to be a little less daunting. Once I started the process of actually setting up my wiki, I realized that it was actually very easy and quite user friendly.

Although I still feel a blog would be more useful for my students’ parents, I could definitely use a wiki to update parents on the latest happenings in the classroom. It would also be an easy place to post homework assignments and newsletters. With the use of links, I post my newsletter and the link to view it. I work at a private school and every week we send out a newsletter highlighting the lessons that week and any news from the classroom. This is usually sent out to my students’ parents via e-mail and sent as an attachment. Instead of doing all of that, I could make a shortcut by using a wiki page. My wiki page could be a “homepage”, if you will, for parents to see links to different items. There, they would see a link for my newsletter and simply check it out there. One downfall to this is that, unless parents check my wiki page daily (or weekly for that matter), most parents would not receive the newsletter. As a teacher, I have found that most parents are more willing to be involved as long as the information is right there in front of them.

As far as assignments for my students go, I am at a loss. I teach Kindergarten and I feel they would have a hard time navigating a wiki page. They could possibly use one if I used a series of images and symbols. Most of my students are just learning to read and due to the varying reading levels, I would have to gear it towards my lower leveled readers. If anyone has any suggestions, I would be more than happy to hear from you.

I guess one way in which I could have my students use a wiki page would be during literacy centers. One of the literacy centers is “computers”. I have a few literacy websites that I have the students visit, however, I am usually the one to find the webpage and set it up for them. By using a wiki page, I could have the series of websites listed. Instead of using words, I could use mostly images and symbols to help them navigate the website.

Overall, I felt the wiki page was very useful and user friendly. I would like to find out more about changing the themes and adding more of the applications to make it more visually appealing. I will be interested to see others’ wiki pages and how they set theirs up.

Wiki Page

http://eaeckley.pbworks.com

Reading Reflection Week 2

               I find blogs to be very useful.  I have set up a couple of blogs so that my family and friends in Michigan could see what was going on in my life out here in Washington, D.C.  However, I don’t keep up with my blogs like I should.  The biggest reason I find blogs to be useful is not so much for me to write down my thoughts, but rather to see what other people have to say.  For example, one blog that I follow on a daily basis is a recipe blog.  Another blog I follow is my cousin’s.  She created the blog to keep our family updated on her son who was born very prematurely.  Blogs are a great way to keep in touch with people or just follow others’ musings.

                My experience with the RSS reader was, at first, quite frustrating.  I had a hard time figuring out how to set one up.  However, I soon realized I was making it seem harder than it actually was.  I had set up a RSS reader and didn’t even realize it!  Once I had it set up and figured out how to subscribe to feeds, I found it to be quite easy and user friendly.  I think it will make it much easier for me to follow the blogs and websites I check on a daily basis.  I will no longer have to go to many different websites!  Instead, I can simply log onto my RSS reader and check for any updates.  However, a few of the sites that I frequent did not seem to have feeds that I could subscribe to.

                At first, I thought Dale’s Cone was quite confusing, but after carefully reading about each part it became a little clearer.  I think that blogs are an example of exhibits.  Dale describes exhibits as one for “spectators” and that there isn’t much involvement (if any) from the spectator.  A blog is a website that people can write about their life or a certain topic (i.e., recipes).  No one except for the author usually has input in what is said on the blog.  The only way they may have any involvement is by commenting on a post.  I think that a RSS reader is an example of a contrived experience.  Dale claims that a contrived experience “meaningfully summarizes and condenses a great deal of specific information.  By using a RSS reader, one does not need to visit many different websites and sift through information to find updates.  Instead, they can use a RSS reader to get all of the updates from many feeds on just one website.

                One imaginative educational use of a blog would be me having a blog for my classroom.  It would be most helpful to my students’ parents; however, anyone could look at it.  Right now, I send home a weekly newsletter to my students’ parents via e-mail.  This newsletter is sent out on Friday evenings.  A blog, however, could be seen at anytime.  They could see pictures from the class or receive more updates than they would from the newsletter.  A blog can be referred back to at anytime as well.  Each newsletter is only sent out once and unless saved in their e-mail, they cannot refer back to it.  One imaginative educational use of a RSS reader could be for teachers sharing information.  With all of the great lesson plans out there, searching for them is very time consuming.  Many teachers now are creating blogs to share lesson plans with other teachers.  By using a RSS reader, one can see updates from many teachers and, therefore, always staying up-to-date with lesson plans.  It makes it much easier to receive these updates and websites can never be lost or forgotten because, once subscribed to that feed, it is kept until deleted by the user. 

Reading Reflection Week 1

Technology is at the forefront of today’s society.  It is everywhere and has truly impacted our everyday lives.  One cannot help but notice the way technology has impacted children’s lives.  At the age of three, and perhaps earlier, children are already learning how to use computers, ipads, iphones, and any other form of technology they can get their hands on.  This was not the case just fifteen years ago.  It is with this advancement in technology that has changed the way we look at education and the way children learn.

While reading Reigeluth and Joseph’s article, I was surprised to see their reasoning for integrating technology in the classroom.  I have always understood the need for technology integration; however, I always associated it with our ever changing world and society.  (In order to keep our students’ interest, we must keep up with technology.) I have never thought about how technology can customize our students’ learning and to prepare learners for real world situations.  By using technology in the classroom, we can allow students to take on ownership of their learning.  This doesn’t mean I think that technology should replace teachers, but rather be a tool for teachers to allow their students to be more involved in the actual learning process.  For the most part, I agreed with Reigeluth and Joseph’s view on integrating technology in the classroom and was glad to have a new perspective on this topic.

I did not have the same feeling as I read Postman’s article.  I was shocked at the extreme view he had on technology in the classroom.  While I do agree that technology can be a distraction at times, I do not fully believe that it is such a distraction that one cannot learn effectively by using it.  If used correctly, technology can be an amazing tool for teaching and to facilitate learning.  I have to disagree with Postman when he claims that schools are more for socialization than for learning facts.  I feel that, as teachers, we spend some of our day working on social and emotional skills; however, we also spend a large part of our day teaching new academic skills.  For example, during a math lesson I may have to ask a student to pay attention or turn around which is essentially teaching the social skill of how to sit during a lesson, however, the majority of that lesson is spent discussing a certain math topic.  While I did understand what Postman was saying and where he was coming from, but I do not necessarily agree with him.

Many people have differing views on integrating technology in education.  These two articles were examples of both extremes (one saying that technology should be used so much in teaching that teachers become facilitators, the other saying technology is a distraction and, if used, would take away from learning).  I look forward to learning more about the ways that I myself can use technology in the classroom to help facilitate learning, but in still keeping great student-teacher relationships.