Friday, October 19, 2012

Blog Assignment # 8

On "This is How We Dream"
This is a video in two parts that consists of a speech by Dr. Kenneth G. Miller at Rutgers University. Dr. Miller describes how reading and education has changed over the years, going from pencil and paper to primarily virtual writing and reading. Many people rarely set foot in a library anymore for this reason. Rather than checking out or borrowing material from libraries and depriving others from using those resources, "knowledge can be shared infinitely".
Dr.
Miller is discussing the importance of collaboration and creativity in education. Creating projects that have textual, visual, and auditory elements is a much more interesting and extensive way to share your research on a particular topic. Through tools like Google Drive, students can work on projects like these together without ever having to meet in person. I think this is a great teaching method, and it relates back to The Networked Student Model that Wendy Drexler composed.
Miller talks about the kind of material that is instantly updated and accurate, there for your immediate viewing. iTunes U has a plethora of recorded lectures available to download, and is a good source of information as well. Miller's "dream" is that one day students will be able to compose projects using entirely digital composing material rather than word processors. He also talks about composition using the web itself, presenting the information produced by news cites, blogs, etc. It creates an emotional profile of the world. I find this fascinating and foreign to me.
On Carly Pugh's Post
Carly Pugh wrote a blog post about an assignment she believes would be beneficial in EDM 310. She provided many links to illustrate what she wanted to do. She created a playlist of videos on YouTube that depict how she will want her classroom to be run, and how her teaching style will be. This relates to Dr. Miller's dream of writing with Multimedia, because she describes all of this without using a word processor or even text at all. It is clear what Carly's ideals are for her students' education through the videos she chose.
On "EDM 310 For Dummies" and the Chipper video
These student-made videos are informative and original. I would be interested in making a video about successful blog posts. The EDM 310 For Dummies video is beneficial to current students because it provides a phone number and a website where you can purchase the book. This includes directions on how to do ALT and TITLE modifiers, embed videos in your blog, etc. Chipper taught us the lesson that working towards a goal in higher education without slacking or procrastinating will get you far.
On "Learn to Change, Change to Learn"
This video was primarily about teaching style and how technology is important in the classroom. Things like televisions, computers and laptops, smartboards, Elmo projectors, and things of that nature are starting to be implemented in our classrooms, but the speakers of this video believe that cell phones, social networking, emailing, blogging, etc. should be as well. This year in elementary schools, "bring your own technology" was set into motion, as I have mentioned in previous posts. Students are now allowed to have electronic devices like cell phones, iPods, tablets, gameboys, etc. to use for educational purposes. There are, of course, kids that will take advantage of this by playing games or texting their friends on these devices. But it is worth the risk of a few abusing the policy to let the others benefit from using technology in the classroom.
Web 2.0 Scavenger Hunt
I created a comic strip about this class, just for kicks. The website was fun and easy to use. I was unable to find out how to post a picture of it or embed it in this post, but you can follow the link to it here.
I found a video tool called Animoto.com, where you can create visually stunning videos out of photos or video clips. It's really easy to use and fun to do. There are many video templates available for use, like fireworks, that you can add clips or pictures to in order to personalize it and make it your own.
Edmodo is a social network for teachers and students. It's set up much like Facebook. You can create a group as a teacher and distribute the group code to your students. You can connect with others on Edmodo at your school, and view other profiles of teachers and students. You can have a calendar of classroom events, and post and review grades in each of your classes or groups.

2 comments:

  1. L.J. I really enjoyed reading your blog post. I think you did a great job of accurately summarizing each video. Your post was very thoughtful and well written. Your picture was related and had working ALT and TITLE modifiers. You had working links to all of the videos mentioned throughout your post. I really didn’t see much wrong with your post. The only thing really stood out to me was one sentence in the first paragraph when you say “many people rarely set foot in a library anymore for this reason” I think it might flow better if you reword it to say “for this reason…..”. Overall I think you have a great post.

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  2. It looks like you forgot to make a couple of the subtitles bold. Good job, though.

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