EIT - Final Reflection

Over the last several weeks, I have expanded my knowledge on emerging instructional technologies. Most of them, I had no idea they even existed. This class has driven me to learn about different technologies and how they could be incorporated into a classroom setting. I like the challenge it presented by encouraging me to expand my comfort zone from known concepts to unknown. Overall, this week has been one of many accomplishments. I loved having our guest speakers Skype into our classroom. It is amazing what can be done with all the different types of technologies available.

Some of the emerging technologies we discussed in class came naturally to use (Google Docs, Google Pages, and PowerPoint.) Since I have a background in business education and have taught students word processing, spreadsheets, databases and presentation software for a few years. This seemed realistic.

A few of the tools required more time to process and learn how to maneuver around. These technologies were blogs, wikis, twitter, ning, video files, Jing, voicethread and Podcast files. I can see me implementing a ning, Jing, voicethread, blog, and/or wikis in my class. These tools provide opportunities for my students to interact in digital native capacity. I liked the possibilities they provided.

I have learned that I am capable of learning new concepts and applying them to my classroom instruction. Some of the concepts/skills required more practice than others to learn – like Second Life. (This virtual world has so many layers to it. It will take quite some time to discover all the components and their uses it possesses.) One of the benefits of this class was being able to explore the emerging technology right away. I’m a firm believer a person has to do something before they can fully understand it. The learning process for me is accelerated when this can occur.

The group project made it possible for us to complete a Ning fully to see how it could operate in a school setting. Each person of our team had certain tasks they were responsible for in completing. There were so many different ideas for this project is was hard to narrow down our selection. However, through negotiations we came up with doing a Ning for a school to have its faculty utilize it.

For this group project, we had a collaboration page where we shared concepts, ideas and a simple page to post websites, links we had to have posted to the Ning. This simplified the group project immensely. The capability of this tool to immediately update a document was powerful. We posted all our links and information to the Ning for ease of use by the faculty. I enjoyed working with this team of individuals and look forward to the two years ahead of us.

Emerging Instructional Technologies - Final Day

This past week has been a week of new opportunities. Throughout the week, I have had the chance to explore new technologies that I never knew existed until then. Many of which I can see me implementing in my classroom - wikispaces, google docs/pages, voicethread, Ning, blogs, Skype, and Jing - just to name a few.

On Friday, June 20, 2008, we presented our final projects to the class. Within each of our projects, we had to use at least six different technologies. Out of the three groups - two used wikis and one used a Ning. Having to present to each of our projects helped to showcase all of our talents and collaboration. I'm in awe of all the talent our Cohort possesses. It is awesome to see all these skills being used. I have a lot to learn from all of them.

Google docs was a major tool in our team planning. Life was so much simpler with sharing our brainstorming page with each other. When changes needed to be made, we recorded and saved it. Immediately, all the other group members had access to those changes. I felt this process of sharing information was much more streamlined than emailing a change or saving the change to a disk/flash drive of some sort.

To end the week on a good note, Theressa, Seth and myself created some 'wooter' t-shirts to wear on Friday. We wanted to share with Dr. Zeitz how his enthusiasm has caught-on by presenting him with a t-shirts, also. I think he has wooterizered all of us.

Authentic Writing Final Project

Often throughout the school year, students are expected to reflect on different concepts and hands-on activities. Blogging would give me an option for the students to post information online. Expectations would be set for appropriate writing skills being used.

VoiceThread offers an opportunity for my students to share their final project designs with others for critiquing. Students would post their designs to voicethread and other students would be expected to go in to each design and provide constructive comments on the projects.

I'm going to talk with the network administration for the school district to see if they can white list 21classes.com for my students to use. I like its simplicity and privacy for just your class. The staff I work with may use this if they saw how simple it truly is. However, someone would have to set everything up on the blog site so they would just have to post their comments.

Emerging Instructional Technologies - Today in Class

We had the opportunity to attend a data storage center here in Cedar Falls, IA - TEAM. This is a data center which is responsible to store information for a variety of nationwide businesses. I loved seeing all the concepts my students and I discuss in class put into real-life. Sometimes we get too caught up in my lab situations and it is positive reinforcement to see the same ideas and skills we discuss in class alive and well in the real-world. Thank you Dr. Zeitz!! I was WOWED!

Today we discussed digital videos and the opportunities they offered to be used in classroom instruction. I thoroughly enjoyed the technology of Jing. A lot of my curriculum centers around step-by-step instruction in order for the student to have success in implementation of the concept. Jing enables me to have another method of presenting the series of steps to the student. This type of technology can be used as a simple set of steps with or without audio. It is easy to use and I can save it to my computer. However, one could save it to a website like Screencast in order to have access to a link on the web. I like the flexibility and ease of use it can offer one.

Dr. Zeitz shared with us how to obtain a domain. I've been curious as to which websites to look at for this technology and how much it costs. I'm going to check look around and see if I could find a domain in my daughter's name.

Emerging Instructional Technology - Podcasting Reflection

Today we had the opportunity to design and develop a podcast for our final group project. Dr. Zeitz went through and explained the importance of making sure our podcast was developed appropriately for a RSS feed. I like his analogy of podcatching and podcasting to fishing. I have a better understanding of these concepts.

I was wowed by the ease one could create a podcast in GarageBand. It is just a short series of steps to include your audio and than add your bells (jingles) and whistles. I found two elements of this process to be more time-consuming than the rest. These were modifying your audio, so it reflects exactly what you desire and writing the script. One needs to truly understand exactly what their objectives are in producing a podcast in order for it to be a successful product.

At the end of Dr. Zeitz's lecture, he shared some podcasts he considers beneficial for us to listen. I appreciate this sharing to give me some guidance to which podcasts may be more appropriate for me to spend my time listening to.

We had a couple of specialists today share with us how to use voice thread and how we could implement it in our classroom. What a phenomenal tool! I can see it being used in my class when the students critique each other's capstone projects and network designs. Students can reflect on the quality and possible functionality of the networks as they are designed.

UNI - June 17, 2008

We got to see Skype in all its glory today. We had a Skype conversation with the Ning creator Steve Hargadon. It was a double opportunity to talk face-to-face with this individual and what he has done for social networking by developing Ning, but also seeing Skype in action. This was awesome!!! I enjoyed it so much, I helped my daughter setup our home computer tonight to put it into action. This piece of technology will make the next 2 weeks more bearable for my family to be apart.

After looking at Ning, we focused on virtual worlds. More specifically, we dedicated the day to Second Life. It was great to work with my avatar without it looking like a scarecrow. Now I know my DSL through Frontier isn't all that great after all. I'm understanding better all the possibilities there are with Second Life. It is possible to have meetings and conferences for individuals to collaborate without leaving their homes and/or offices. I was impressed when I was able to find a group of individuals who are instructors in the Cisco Networking Academy. They have a group dedicated to sharing classroom ideas on Second Life. :-)

Emerging Instructional Technologies Reflections

UNI - June 16, 2008

Today was our first day of Emerging Instructional Technologies class on campus at UNI. It was great to have face-to-face communication with all the members of the cohort. I have felt a little disjointed by not having this opportunity. I feel more grounded after meeting.

Some of the ha-haws I experienced on Monday, were working with the Google docs/pages, mobile tools and tinyurl.com. I can see using Google docs/pages in my classes. For starters, I want to include a spreadsheet form which encompasses all of my beginning of the year questions. This will be tallied into one location for me to have easier access.

I loved the Goog-411 feature. In the trunk of my car, I have an outdated telephone book, so I can find any phone number and/or address of a business when I'm out and about. This enables me to have access to updated information at my fingertips at any time and any where. Fabulous!!

The http://tinyurl.com website resolves an issue I have discovered with my various postings – urls being too long. This is a tool I know I will use on a regular basis to help simplify my postings without always having to link to a name or title.

When I have the opportunity to practice the new concepts with hands-on activities I have better retention. I appreciated having the time to do this. Thank you.