Since last week’s reflection I listened to the pod cast on Christensen. It was interesting to hear his thoughts in his own words. I also set up a CLEAR account. It is a free tool for language teachers. Clear is the Center for Language Education and Research at Michigan State. You can get free access to their Rich Internet Application tools to create online speaking and listening activities. One application that I would like to try out is speaking and listening “worksheets” for dialog practice. Otherwise the majority of my time was spent on answering threads five and six, and working on the final paper and presentation.
I posted my presentation late this afternoon, and as luck would have it right before I started teaching my night class an Apex Learning Demo on math tools came through from the sales representative. The sales representative also informed us that St. Paul school system has purchased Apex for the summer school program to be used mainly for credit recovery. The demo is really great and I would have used in my presentation. Instead I’m going to post the link to it here. It is 5 minutes in length and I think you will also find it interesting. Apex demo link -http://www.apexlearning.com/demo/

I have to say I have learned and explored many new things that I know I would not have if I hadn’t had this class. I know I would not be on facebook or twitter or be blogging. Needless to say a few times I heard my kids say “Mom is doing what?” I have to admit that was kind of fun. In the future, I hope students and teachers will be able to access more for free on the web or at a reduced cost, because some programs just don’t have the resources to afford some of this.

Weekly Reflection

I finished reading Anderson and thought it was an interesting book. I liked that it was an easy read, and since my husband is a mechanical engineer it was fun to ask him his opinion of Anderson’s description of how Toyota engineers its cars. He commented that successful engineering departments have followed these same procedures for several decades. I will save my other thoughts on this when we do the thread on Anderson.

I finally got my I Google Page organized the way I wanted it. I added an RSS feed for YouTube for Adult ESL learners. I looking forward to seeing what new material might appear. I’m now able to easily access my Twitter, Facebook, G mail accounts, and to follow the blog.spot list. I’ve also added the sticky notes and it is a great way to track what one is doing. I’ve been doing researcher on Apex Learning Systems software, and also Lexia Learning, and Merit Software - these both have packages specifically intended for adults. Mindplay is software for struggling readers. They all, of course, promise to improve student achievement. I know cost will probably determine which software will be chosen for our lab. This coming week I want to explore a Michigan site that has free programs that are accessed through the Web.

Ethical and legal ramifications and considerations of social networking is a topic we have not discussed much in class, but I think it is all on our minds with regards to ourselves as teachers and our students. I came across this article entitled The Whole World (Wide Web) is Watching at http://www.nea.org/home/12784.htm. This article gives a whole laundry list of crazy and stupid things people posted on Facebook or My Space that cost them their jobs. The issue raised is that of free speech. Do school employees have the right, on their own time, to blog about whatever they want without fear of losing their job? According to this article, school employees can be disciplined for their actions outside of school if it would have an unfavorable effect on the school or the teacher’s ability to teach (as we have previously discussed in our Legal & Ethical Issues class). This would be the case if the teacher’s blog has sexually explicit or other unacceptable material that could be seen by students. In 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it was not a violation of free speech to fire a police officer when his conduct was “detrimental to the mission and function of the employer”. In 2008 a probationary teacher was fired for his posting on MySpace and Facebook. The U.S. District Court ruled that online exchanges between this teacher and his students were “inappropriate” and added that “such conduct could very well disrupt the learning atmosphere of the school.” As I read this I thought, what were they thinking? How could they not see that this would get them in trouble? However, it made me wonder if other postings that would cause far less controversy could also get a teacher in trouble.

Week Four Reflection

I have been keeping track of what I have been doing this past week, but because of family obligations and getting ready to host Easter and have not had the time to post it, so here it is.

This week I was able to set up a Twitter account. My user name is CathyQ10 if you would want to leave me a twitter message. Once I had it set up I was going to twitter my daughter, but couldn’t because the system was overloaded. What an interesting first experience with this new technology. I’m still working on getting the I-Google account better organized. I read the first 70 pages of Disrupting Class. The authors are noting the importance that motivation plays in successful advancements in our society. We have studied and talked a great deal about extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, and how each plays a different role in a student’s learning. Christian explains how throughout history we can see how a country’s people would be extrinsically motivated to study math, science and engineering in order to prosper. However, it was not unusual to see, once a country had become wealthy, the next generation would decide to study the humanities or the social sciences. The extrinsic motivation was gone. It leaves all educators with the challenge of intrinsically motivating students. They see the way to intrinsically motivate students is to tailor education by using software as part of the delivery system to meet the learner’s needs. The authors note that teachers have been good about responding to society’s changing needs (they referred to it as moving the goal posts), so it was good to see them acknowledge how educators manage to change and adapt curriculum in mid-stream. It will be interesting to continue this read to see how their ideas unfold.

I had success in setting up a delicious account and have tagged some grammar lessons that were on YouTube. I need to check them out more to see if they would work for my students. I found a site on classroom 2.0 for using technology in Adult Education. I’m looking forward to exploring this more. I also found a site entitled the Savvy Teacher which explains how to use I-Google.

Week Three Reflection

After class last week I was able to set up an I-Google account, and do a little more work on my blog site. I would still like to add some more things to it. The next day I left for three days to visit my parents in Wisconsin as our school was on spring break. I was without internet access for these days, so I read some more of Hendron and printed off the articles so I could take them with to read. On my drive there I heard a lot of discussion on the radio about President Obama’s town meeting that was going to be held on the web. It brought to mind some of the articles we have read giving time lines on the development of new technology. Some callers didn’t think he should do this because many people still don’t have access to the web. However, it was pointed out that he would able to reach many, because this is what more and more people use - the web to get their news. These same arguments were used for and against FDR using the radio and JFK using television to get their messages out to the people. So here we are witnessing the use of another technology to communicate. I heard that over 100,000 questions were submitted to his town meeting.

When I returned home, I was able to connect with a few people on facebook. When I went looking for friends from my high school class, there was only one listed. Could it be my age? However, I heard that in the last two months facebook has seen a dramatic increase in the number of people over the age of 35 signing up. My kids are still surprised that I’m on facebook, but I have to admit if it were not for this class I probably would still not be on. Sunday night I was listening to 60 Minutes and they had a story explaining how hackers are using sites like facebook to access your username and password, so they can get to your bank accounts or whatever. The hackers pretend to be one of your friends, and once you click on they have what they need to get into your sites. Downloading music is another way. This is a link to the story if you are interested. I also spent some time looking at twitter and delicious. I wanted to sign into these accounts, but ended up spending my time answering the four strands for Thread 3, and following the discussions which I thought was all very interesting. I would have liked to have heard Future of Education interview with Erin Reilly, on how we might best equip young people with the social skills and cultural competencies, but I was teaching that night, so I missed it. I was able to explore oddcast.com and viewed the Sitepal introduction to the product. Losing three day of internet access, put me behind of where I wanted to be at this point, but I hope to be doing some twittering very soon.

Thoughts on websites

I have been spending some time looking at the 20 websites to see if I could find anything that would fit ABE. One of the things I'm looking for is tutorial software that would work for our GED students, those transitioning into college who are not at the 12th grade level and advanced ELL students. Under eschoolnews.com they mentioned MyMathLab Tutor it is put out by Pearson and costs $57.00. It is to help students be ready to take college level math. Fifteen Washington based schools have used it. Teachers said the students like the software, but find the teachers need to be there to motivate students to keep them going. The next thing I found that would be of interest to those of you who have smartboards I found on edutopia.org under the heading best education software was Lecture Scribe- a tool for animating interactive white board lessons.
Of the sites Classroom 20.ning would seem to be the best for what I do.

I have probably spent about 30hours so far working on everything from learning the sites, posting and reading.

Welcome to my blog. I'm trying to get everything set up. I look forward to blogging with you.