Second Last week ... Yay!!

This week is the second last week of school We only have 6 days left before we depart for student teaching, and I am so excited! I can't wait to be done classes, but we had more presentations this week and they were interesting!

Video conferencing was the first up this week. They talked about Skype and showed us how to use it. This was good because I have never used Skype, but now I actually know how to use it! I think it's a great tool for guest speakers who can't come into the school. This could lead to a greater variety of presenters, which is excellent! I also didn't know about that you could share files and show the screen that they are on. If they are having issues with a project or something on their computer, instead of sending the file, they can just show you the screen! I also like how the students would be able to leave a voicemail if they had a question. The second thing they talked about was Elluminate. We saw this with Alec Courous earlier in the term, but it was interesting to see it from the perspective of the creator. I like how the moderator and the students can modify the white board. This could allow collaborative work at large distances. I think Alec Courous was in Regina, Saskatchewan! I like the idea of the students being able to take notes about the presentations! Well done guys!!

Next up was "The good bad and the ugly of the internet:"

Bad:
Unreliable Sites : I think we need to teach students how to figure out which sites are good and which are bad.
Viruses : always a threat for schools, especially when filtering and blocking are not in place.
Personal Contact : I agree that the internet is having an impact on our social skills in face-to-face situations. These skills are something that we need to teach students in our classes.
Copyright Infringement : Teachers must emphasize the importance of citing and the ill-effects of passing things off as their own when it's not.
Anyone/Anything : Anyone can post anything. There is no monitoring and some of the information and ideas they are posting can be false or harmful to other people. We have to teach students how to use information safely and how to tell the bad sites from the good ones.

Good:
Instant Messaging : Can contact people in all parts of the world. Gain information that otherwise would have been unavailable. Blogs, Skype, Webcams, Facebook, etc are all examples of how this is used today. Instant messaging can be difficult to keep inappropriate use to a minimum, but I guess that's the teacher's job!
Information : Information can be found about anything and this can be a really useful tool for teachers and students as well!
Distance Education : Access for all! Good education for all students and courses that they could not take before, they are able to take!
Teacher Resources : Again, we can find anything on the web, and the internet is such a great tool to use. It makes teachers lives less hectic and crazy! Something we all can appreciate.
(atozteacherstuff.com, etc.)
Teacher networking : Teacher support over the internet is great. Sometimes teachers need help, and they can send out a call for help on their network, and tons of people will reply.

The next up was Video games in the classroom. It's a great idea for some courses, but I think there are very few games to teach biology! Someone should invent that...*hint hint*

Ok, so sorry to make this blog longer, but I almost forgot about today! Today we had Darren Kuropatwa and another guy and I can't remember his name right now! But they came to talk to our class today about technology...no kidding! Darren talked today about technological literacy. I thought it was interesting that he said we shouldn't be teaching kids literacy, but fluency. Technological fluency is competency with today's tools and using them with new technologies tomorrow. I thought that was a good distinction. Our tools evolve way faster than our culture and we need to be sure that our kids can extrapolate their skills to future endeavors. That was the thing that stuck out most for me!
The other guy (still can't remember his name) talked about neat things you can do with your cell phone in class. He showed us a program called iPadio where you can call a number and record a call. You can then attach it as an mp3 to a website OR transcribe the call into words. This would be a good program for children with special needs. If they could take the phone call and have it transcribed into notes for them.

The only thing I wanted to see was HOW to use these interesting technologies in my classroom. I have found with a lot of the presenters, they tell us all about a program, but don't really tell us how to use it in the classroom, because goodness knows, I don't know how!!

That is really enough for now, so blog you later!