My EDM 310 Blog Assignments are Now Complete!

Hi everyone! I really enjoyed having class with you all. This will be my last post, I really hope I didn't leave any posts out! :) Hope everyone has a great summer and great semesters to follow!

Summing it up..

I'm going to be honest, I've learned about a lot of things in this class that otherwise I probably would have never considered. Blogs, I've been familiar with but I never had one of my own. I definitely see the use, personally and professionally. I would definitely love to have a class blog when I have my own classroom, it seems to be a really useful tool with students and their parents. I really liked looking up the blogs around the country and the world. It just reinforced the fact that they are really useful in the classroom. Also, it was neat making those contacts with the other teachers too. I was also familiar with presentations, but not doing them on Google Docs. Google Docs is something that I was not familiar with, but I really like it. It's free, easy to use especially if you've been familiar with other computer programs, and it's easy to access all of your saved files. Google forms and databases were a neat tool too. I might not use them as much as I would the docs, but to know the tool is there and how to use it is always a good thing. I really liked working with the podcasts too. I think that would be a cool project if you have students at the age in which they would understand what's going on. I think they would enjoy it and it will give them the oppotunity to learn something new also. iTunes is something I've been using for a long time, but I'd never really paid attention to the iTunesU before this class so I'm sure that it will be useful as I continue through school and then begin entering the schools. I think the professional blog, while a bit complicated, really made me think about who I am and who I want to be as a teacher. I've come to realize that it is more and more important to start thinking of these things ahead of time instead of dealing with everything when I'm starting out as a teacher. Google Earth has always been really neat to me. Sometimes I just get on there and look around because I'm bored, so I'm sure I will get some use out of that. As far as ACCESS and ALEX, I think those two are extremely important. My plan is to teach in Alabama, so those two things will be key in my classroom. I'm actually doing research on ACCESS, but I love the online education oppotunities with it. ALEX will be something I'm constantly implementing into my work simply because that is what the curriculum I will be teaching is centered around. I'm extremely glad you taught us how to use Foliotek with your method. My other teachers have definitely showed me various ways to use it, but none have worked as well.

I believe all of these things will be helpful when I become a teacher. In my post about project 6 I mentioned how as the generations come forward the students are becoming more and more technology oriented. Everything we learned in this class could be implemented with the students and they will enjoy and learn from it so much better than just by using textbooks. So, in summary I learned A LOT from this class.

I cannot imagine learning anything else though. I came into this class basically expecting it to be a normal computer class, nothing special. Now though I know it was anything but a normal computer class. I learned about things that I definitely had never heard of so as far as learning anything else, I'm really not sure what else there would be.

I don't think I learned about anything I didn't want to learn about either. Twitter was the only one I has difficulty finding use of. I see the benefits, but I'm not exactly sure how much I'll implement it. Who knows though, I could use it a lot more than I'm expecting.

Report on Project 6!

For my project 6 I contacted Mr. Joe McClung. He is a 6th grade teacher in Noel, Missouri at Noel Elementary School. During our blog posts about schools around the country I had found Mr. McClung's class blog and wrote about it in my post. He commented on my post so I decided to contact him and I asked him about technology he uses in his own classroom.

I was suprised to find out that Mr. McClung's class was already using Google Docs. When I was e-mailing with him he said they were using it to share documents with one another in class and then they were going to conduct a peer review on a short story with another class in Australia. I think that is so cool. Now I'm a sophomore in college and this semester has been the first time I've actually even heard of Google Docs. Yet, these sixth graders are using it and collaborating with a classroom across the globe! That would be such a neat class to be in in sixth grade!!

He also said he uses a program called Ning with his students. He said it is much like Facebook, but he can control everything that goes on with it. I like that it is something that the teacher can control. Even if the students are in sixth grade, there always needs to be some restrictions here and there. He said it does allow for chat and discussion boards though so that is another very cool tool.

Mr. McClung's class sounds very neat and interesting to me. I know that when I was in sixth grade we didn't use anywhere near the amount of technology that he's using with his students. What he's doing is very important, because as the generations progress the students are becoming more and more technology oriented and the teachers have to follow this trend to keep the students interested. I hope to do as well as he is with the technology realm. I'm sure his students really enjoy the class.

Check out his blog: Mr. McClung's Class Blog