R/D6

Related to Chapter 14 (R/D6), what are some ways the ideas/concepts/principles discussed in this chapter could be applied in your professional work? Do you see opportunities where these ideas could help you or your students?

What I really liked about this chapter is how it discussed different ways of helping improve "performance."  I couldn't help but think of a teacher trying 10 different ways to train a student to solve a math equation, yet the student still may get it wrong on a test or a real world application.  As an educator I do feel we need to think outside of the box, especially to help with students motivation.  An unmotivated student who does not value their "training" will most likely not perform well on any given test (whether its authentic or contrite).  HPI allows for many different interventions.  I also see how the interventions that would be used would need to come from analysis.  How many times as educators do we just try an intervention before truly analyzing a situation.  Maybe its an intervention that we've had success with before, but how many times are the situations that have caused an poor performance truly the same.

I could definitely see my self using HPI in the classroom as a way to force myself to analyze both my audience and the causes for performances.  I would also like to keep the openness of the concept close to heart as my school is attempting to implement miblisi, which is a reading/behavior initiative to help boost reading abilities and promoting positive behavior.

1.  I posted a podcast, so I will not be answering #1.

2.  What added value might podcasting have in your professional setting (company, school, etc.)?  

A few ideas include for uses of pod casts may include:

• Announcements and Updates- everyday we have very annoying updates at our school  both at the beginning of the day and at the end.  Some of this information is vital for parents, yet the kids do not always listen well or tell their parents.  A podcast would be a great way to share vital information that could be updated quite frequently with ease.  
• When kids are absent they often miss information, similarly kids miss information when they are taking notes.  If a teacher is lecturing, why not turn it into a pod cast so that it could be revisited by students and accessed by them at home.   
• Podcasts seem to be travel friendly with Ipods and similar devices.   Students could access information on the go along with listen to lessons, ideas, or concepts at their own pace for understanding. 
• Podcasts also level the playing field for entertainment opportunities.  Anyone can become a radio personality, if you are good enough,  they will listen. 

Podcasts interesting and fun.  We'll have to see what the long term effects and uses are.  They do seem to have a lot or momentum right now. 

R/D5

Do I think that the internet and Web will have a major impact in k-12 education, higher education, adult education?

Yes.  The web and internet will have a great impact on all forms of education in the future.  The book gave us evidence on how different instructional media has changed education in all all three areas in the past.  It would be naive to think that the internet and the web would not have at the same if not greater impact on education.  First off, the internet allows information to be shared at amazing speed.  That information is not confined to one type of media.  Through the internet we can access video, audio, static pictures, softwares, simulations, literature, participate in discourse, virtually explore geography and virtually perform science experience.  

     The web seems to be currently having a large impact on higher education.  I can say this because it is amazing to think that I can earn a degree a university with out ever setting foot on it.   Having a whole class exist with out ever seeing each other seems like a big change from driving to a campus and sitting in a hot stuffy room, where there is only room for 20.  The nice thing about the web, the it seems to be only limited by bandwidth, gigahertz, bytes, servers, etc.. all of which are growing at exponential rates.   Right now our class is only limited by the amount of time and effort an instructor can put into planning and participating in our experience and grading out work.   I wonder if higher education will be more of a wiki experience where the group polices itself, learns in a constructivist approach and awards and privledges are given by the group as a whole...

I have seen recently the effect of how the web has changed adult training.  I use to have to go to a meeting once a year to be updated on the rules of track and field.  For me it was a quick drive of 10 miles.  There would be coaches who would show up from over 60 miles away.   This year however, we were able to be trained over the internet by watching a video.  In fact, I felt I got more out of the video because it much more interactive than a man presenting to a room of 90 board coaches.   Also, I now get to watch other training videos for school at my convenience  over the net as opposed.  This is a great way to value time.   

     Another thought I had when I read this question was that with more and more people working at home or collaborating across the world though the use of the internet, it seems that there would have to be similar educational experiences.  If you hire a person to do work for you in Texas but you live in Michigan, the web seems like a fairly inexpensive way to communicate and train someone instead. 

My First Podcast...

Not the most interesting content... but this could be a really neat way to communicate information. Hope this works.

EDT5410-MattSwanson.mp3

Quinton playing the guitar!

(R/D3):
1) What value (if any) do you think social bookmarking might hold for teachers and/or students? You may think about students sharing with each other, teachers sharing with their students, teachers sharing with other teachers, administrators sharing with teachers, sharing with parents, or any other scenario(s) you can imagine.

I think that social bookmarking holds value in that we it would give teachers an easy to access place that keeps bookmarks.  I have had teachers ask for websites, videos, and internet activities and I usually send them links through emails.  If teachers all had social bookmarking sights it would be easy access for trading ideas.  My district currently has eboards for all of the teachers.  In those eboards many of the teachers post links to websites where students can get help or find information.  I see social bookmarking being easier (not by much) to bookmark webpages, verses setting up links.  I would like to see the social bookmarking pages be linked with the blogs so that it is one stop shopping.  I think the easier it is to access the information the more people will use it.  If I have to go to a blog, a social bookmark sight, and possibly the school website to get the links for the info, I doubt I would visit it very often, whether I'm a parent, a student, or a colleague. 

2) Back to the Trends & Issues reading, to what degree do the definitions in this chapter correspond with what you have thought about this area and what it is you hope to do in your line of work (or in a future career)? Does is there anything surprising or very new you read in this chapter? Does something seem to be missing?

I definitely find that the definitions discussed in this chapter correspond to the confusion I have felt and seen when discussing educational technology.   I think the biggest problem is changing peoples thoughts of what technology is.  In the class that I teach we use the definition of "using knowledge to turn resources into goods and services that people need and want."  Within the framework of this definition we use the design cycle (problem, research, planning, building, testing and evaluation.) This definition allows the use of processes and systems to create the hardware and software that we often think of as technology.  I feel that the definitions the book discusses is right on.  It is smart to call it educational technology and design, because most people do not see technology as a way to develop solutions, they see it as the solution.  The word design becomes very important for this reason.  As far as a future career, I love the idea of designing ways to improve education through development and usage of technology.  The systematic approach discussed in the book seems appropriate being that every field of design I have studied uses similar steps to ensure effective solutions are created.  

(R/D4):
3) How might you incorporate photo sharing into a educational activity or unit? What might be some concerns you would have about allowing students play with these services? What might be a great benefit of such services?

Photo sharing scares me when dealing with educational activities when pictures of students are used on the internet.  We currently do not allow digital cameras at our schools because of some misuse.  At the same time, I have many parents interested in what we are doing in class, and since we are always building some sort of project I would love to share those pictures.   Having parent interest and support is so benefical to the students.  Photo sharing would be a good way to gain interest, but I would like to learn more about legality issues.

4) In reading Chapter 2, what similarities and what differences did you identify between the process the authors describe and the processes you have used to develop educational lesson plans? If you have not developed educational lesson plans, were there aspects of the process described in this chapter that you found particularly surprising, useful or unnecessary?

Being a tech ed teacher all of my lessons revolve around the design cycle, which I find very similar to the picture of figure 2.1 in the book.  Analyze is similar to how we find problems and research, develop is very similar to the planning stage we use, implement is reflective of our building stage and we also have a test and evaluation phase.  I do not find that in my current educational setting that I get to use all the characteristics of instructional design.  I cannot say that I am always goal oriented, that outcomes are always measured in a reliable and valid way, or that the design is always a team effort.  I do feel that each subject lends itself to these processes in different ways.  Being a woodworking teacher, some of these characteristics do not fit in to how we teach our classes in regards to meeting state expectations and our own curriculum. 

Hello everyone.... 

My photo sharing sight that I would like to share with you is mattandcallie.shutterfly.com

We use the sight primarly to share photos with family so that grand parents and great grandparents can order pictures of my son Quinton and have them delivered right to their house.  We picked shutterfly because it is easy to use and works with Targets photo.  We click the pictures we want and pick them up down the street in an hour. 

Also, my del.icio.us sight is http://del.icio.us/mqswanson  I have used it primarily for a some guitar tab websights that I frequent and some information for school that I use.   I hope to add more later in the week.  Hope your having a good week. -Matt

I am fairly indifferent with this whole blog experience.  I'm not sure if this class is a good test of a blog because I do not feel that it makes my life or the life of other classmates any easier.  I feel that emails or posting on discussion boards are actually easier and more convenient for communicating the type of information we have been asked to do.  The reason I say this is because blogs require me to go to a separate web page to write a passage on a topic.  If I want to read another classmates thoughts, I must also go to their web page.  I could just as easily send out a mass email and my thoughts could go directly into each of my classmates or professors mail boxes.  I could also have each of my classmates fill my mailbox and I could easily reply to the ones that I desired too.  So I guess I am thoughts are blogs are not the best way to communicate in small learning communities but could have great potential in making information available to the masses.

My thoughts on RSS readers are also mixed.  I think the key to me enjoying an RSS reader would to be hooked onto a feed that I truly needed to know updates of.  I currently do not feel that I must know when each of the websites I am subscribed too are updated.  I guess if my life or job was connected more to a specific website and I wanted to know each update that took place I would enjoy the RSS.  As of now, I still enjoy "surfing" the websites that I frequent and looking for updates for myself.  

The blog lends itself to direct purposeful experience, if the experience that you are looking for is writing on a blog.  Beyond that, blogs can allow readers to view pictures, or link them to videos but I would have to say blogs lend themselves to visual symbols.  I say this because most of my experiences with blogs has been reading them. 

I do not feel that the RSS reader fits dales cone.  When Dale published the paper in 1969 the internet did not exist.   I find that RSS readers are an internet tool that can make the internet searching experience faster and more productive.  The software of RSS readers themselves are not an experience, but they help you locate and find experiences.  The experiences you can find on the internet can be vast including video, images, simulations, direct, audio, etc...  I do not feel that RSS readers do not fit an experience of Dale's cone beyond experiencing RSS readers.

RSS and blogs can both be computer imagination in an educational setting.  One way I could see RSS readers and blogs being used together as computer imagination would be to have each student in a class have a blog and an RSS reader.  If each reader notified the teachers and the students when a blog is updated, a teacher could get rid of the process of collecting papers.  In fact, students could turn in papers and be in discussions from great distances.   Blogs and RSS readers would help students communicate, especially if they are not able to communicate in real time chat rooms or in person. 

These first articles are the same one's that I read last semester for EDT 5420.  Maybe we could use technology to track the ideas, concepts, experiences that different students have already gone through during a master's program so that we don't spend time doing the same assignment in successive semesters.  That may have sounded a bit cynical.  I apologize. 

Technology is going to be extremely important in education in the future years.  Technology has completely broken down the doors of communication between people in both communities and across the world.  Has anyone read the book "The World is Flat"?  The book discusses how jobs are changing and how technology is playing such a huge role.  In the book the author describes how some fast food chains have moved to using call centers to take peoples order.  To think that our fast food drive thru workers will be in another state or country when taking our order is bit weird, but the users of call centers discussed in the book how the drive thru they operate are now faster and more effective using the call center approach.  So although postman may say that the call center does not solve a "problem" since he was able to get a burger just fine with the human taking the being the same one he gives money too, the owners of a company may not see it that way.  If a boss can make more money through the use of technology then a boss will probably use the technology.  Since part of our job as educators is to prepare our youth for jobs, and jobs are becoming more technical, it would seem that education must become more technical.  

Technology allows students and teachers to be connected in amazing ways.  As we strive to have education become more differentiated, technology will allow us to connect and deliver information in new and exciting ways.  One area I look foward to seeing developed more for use in education is video conferencing.  There are many times teachers are expected to deliver information that could be done in a much better way by someone else.  If I wanted to explain how engineers test and evaluate a product, how great would it be to use an actual engineer to talk to my students.  Technology will also cause the role of the teacher may greatly change.  Teacher will become facilitators and enablers to students who will seek out information that using different methods optimized for the experience they are looking for.  This topic is really a can of worms.  In an attempt to summarize some of these fairly random thoughts, I would have to say in response to the two readings that both teaching using technology and about technology will become essential in continuing to develop authentic, meaningful experiences in education.  Even if Postman doesn't think there's a problem.