My Vodcast

Juggling Technology

I read the “Too cool for school” article by Mishra and Koehler yesterday, and today I was fortunate enough to view Bel’s and Kate’s  video about it.

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I agree having technology doesn’t make it useful in an educational sense. The teacher needs to be able to use it in a way that students can benefit and learn from and with technology.

This can be a challenge as I’m not that confident with technology, but I’m actually feeling inspired to experiment and research into how we as teachers could use phones and ipods for example in the classroom. I mean, after all, I love playing with those new toys, so why not make use of them.

Hopefully there are some more educated people out there who are willing to share their knowledge with me!

too cool for school

When reading the article “Too cool for school” by Mishra and Koehler it made me think about my own technology knowledge and attitude.

They suggest technology can and probably u be used in the classroom, but teachers have to know how to do this. To be able to integrate technology successfully, the teachers have to know a lot about the resources.

And that is where I can see the problem. How can I possibly integrate these new inventions if I don’t know much about them myself? Of course, I can always go to in services and educate myself via the internet, but for that to be affective, I completely rely on others and their knowledge, and I’m not sure if I would be able to educate myself sufficient enough to use that knowledge to teach my students.

Of course, it is definitely something I would like to achieve as I can see the educational benefits in me using technology; I’m just not sure if I, as a technology Neanderthal, would be able to keep up with my students.

Thanks to this flickrer

Let's write it down!

An article by Helen Barett has recently intrigued me.  She introduced ePortfolios and explained that they are computer based journals that record one’s learning. They often have artefacts attached to them to broaden the documentation. Barett further argues that for the learning to be deeper and more meaningful, the  person should go back over their learning and reflect on it as well as setting new goals. In her opinion this aids a more meaningful learning.

By making this ePortfolio public, other people can observe your learning and comment on it, which could further your own learning.

I have never really thought about documenting my learning, but I suppose that is exactly what I have done here on this blog. I wrote about all the new skills and knowledge I have acquired over the past few weeks and I suppose it has been very useful.

I have learnt so many new things about the use of technology and I suppose while all this is still fresh in my memory it is easy enough for me to remember. But I won’t be learning this much about technology at uni again, and who knows, I may not be using lots of the information for another few years, so documenting it would actually be a great way so I can get back to it when needed.

And now that I think about it, if I further reflect and document how my applied knowledge worked out, it helps e to analyse what I’m doing and correct it when necessary.

And haven’t I learnt a great deal from my fellow peers as I followed their blogposts?

I have now started a Wiki with some of these peers to record and reflect on resources and knowledge. So isn’t this already an ePortfolio?

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Stop it now!

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Bullying has taken on a whole new dimension with today’s use of technology and I am very concerned about this topic as I’m not too sure on how to handle it.

Last week, I was introduced to a great website, cyberbullying. This site raises awareness to cyber bullying and educates students in an innovative and interactive way about the safe use of technology and what to do when being bullied.

I was amazed by the site and felt it is was useful to teach my future students about the topic. This site shows a good insight into bullying and would be a great asset to me as a teacher. However, it must be used in an educational context and can’t just be shown to the students without any explanations.

 Do however believe that everyone needs to be aware of cyber bullying in order for us to fight it. The best way to do this would be to educate yourself, the students and even the parents and guardians, and the site is a great start to this.

My new Budd:e

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When we got our first computer with internet in year 8, I was extremely excited but also worried. My parents had lectured me that being online is just like being in the city by myself and that there may be lots of security problems that we don’t know about yet. So when I set up my first email account, I ensured that I would use the highest security settings, just in case.
 This attitude has not really changed and to this day I’m always very conscious of what information I put on the internet, and joining facebook was a huge discussion for me as I was worried about sharing all my information with potential strangers.

So internet security has always been very important to me, and now that technology is becoming so big, I’m faced with being responsible for my future students’  internet security. Up until today, this was a huge concern for me.

But there is an answer. Like my fellow students Miss Kate, I have now discovered Budd:e, a site that teaches students how to use the internet safely. And I must say, after going through it, it has actually taught e a few things too.

Budd:e is a fantastic site that is very user friendly and engaging for primary school children. If this is used appropriately during my lessons, I think I might have a chance of making my students aware of safe internet usage.

 I just hope that they will take it on board!

Copyright

Sitting in class, we are discussiong copyright in schools. The question is
You are a teacher, your small budget has been cut. you have one piece of software and it needs to go to the five computers you have for thirty kids. It's against the law to copy it. What would you do?


This is really tricky, as I believe that it is my duty to educate children, so I would be really tempted to copy it.
But now I realised that there are actually spot checks in schools. I did not know that. This makes me a little more inclined to obey the law as I obviously don't want to get found out. But wow,
this is a really challenging question!

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